A city-owned building in East Cambridge has the potential to become an epicenter for community arts and nonprofit organizations, according to the mayor of New England’s life sciences and high-tech hub.
The city acquired the Foundry Works Building, a 52,000-square-foot former manufacturing space at 101 Rogers St., in January 2012 in a swap that allowed a developer to build a large, dense office and lab campus on nearby Binney Street.
The deal with Alexandria Real Estate Equities transferred the Foundry building, built in 1895 as manufacturing space, with the stipulation that whatever fate the city decided for the property, 10,000 square feet must be dedicated to some type of community use.
The city council is now in the process of determining that fate. The council’s finance committee met last week with the city manager and redevelopment chief to discuss the numbers behind selling the building to a real estate developer or retaining and leasing the space to interested parties. Who would actually end up in the building as tenants – Cambridge tech startups, community arts groups, nonprofit entities – is still anybody’s guess.
If it were sold outright, considering 10,000 square feet would need to be dedicated to community space, the price would likely be between $2.5 and $3.5 million. If Cambridge retained ownership and leased it to a private developer with that 10,000-square-foot stipulation, it would probably put between $150,000 and $200,000 into the city coffers. Whatever the decision, bringing the vacant building up to code for commercial use would cost anywhere from $9.5 to $11.2 million, depending on the use, according to city officials.
“Folks look at the building and think there are possibilities for small high-tech firms; others are looking at it as an art center for the city,” said Brian Murphy, Cambridge’s community development chief. “The challenges are what’s required for capital improvements to make it [ready to be leased] or to sell it.”
One option is to unload the property for $1 or other small fee to an established arts authority that could raise the funds to renovate the property and lease it out to artists or nonprofits for reduced rates, said Cambridge Mayor Henrietta Davis.
“If we sold it, it doesn’t look like it’s worth that much to us,” since it’s stipulated that 10,000 square feet be dedicated toward some type of community and educational uses, Davis said. “There are models of these art centers as close as … the Watertown Arsenal [Center for the Arts], and I know there was a place on the Cape that has done this, where there’s been no charge for the piece of property to begin with. The Watertown Arsenal Arts is about 30,000 square feet, no too terribly different from [the Foundry building]. The person who chairs the Arsenal Arts is somebody I happen to know who is probably quite available to talk about what it would take … to raise the money to outfit the building.”
Grassroots Momentum
The Foundry opened its doors in late June for local groups to make the case for transforming the neglected property into a community-based art center for the neighborhood, where residents continue to be hemmed in by real estate development.
Across Kendall Square and East Cambridge, the center of the region’s life sciences and tech world, massive developments are being built for the likes of Pfizer, Biogen Idec, Novartis and others that will create upwards of 1.85 million square feet of new office and lab space in the area, according to brokerage firm Richards Barry Joyce & Partners. Plus, there’s more than 630,000 square feet of similar space in the immediate pipeline whose developers are just waiting for leases to be signed. All told, the city will be home to nearly 2.5 million square feet of shiny new glass and steel structures. That’s beyond the 10.6 million square feet of offices and 8.4 million square feet of labs already in use.
“East Cambridge has been … victimized by development in the area,” said Trudi Goodman, an artist and actor who lived several years in East Cambridge before moving to adjacent Inman Square. She, like many other residents that have testified at city council hearings in the last week, suggested there could be a mix of community-oriented uses in the building, like art space, a daycare center and nonprofits.
Techies In The Mix
It’s not as though artists and community members are the only ones interested in the Foundry. Some see the site as a prime opportunity to create a haven for tech startups that are being edged out of Kendall Square by rising rental rates and little available space.
Tim Rowe, who runs the Cambridge Innovation Center, an incubator for smaller companies, said he would be interested in purchasing the building from the city, depending on the terms and conditions of the sale. He envisions offering startup space, but also incorporating programs to teach community members the skills to work for a tech company as, say, a project manager, as well as space that could be booked by area organizations.
“The city could sell it and say, you can buy it but you can’t [demolish] it, and the uses must be within the following categories,” Rowe opined. “If that happens you won’t get global [real estate investment trusts] buying it, and the price would drop to a price local groups could afford. There is no community space in Kendall Square right now. One of the longtime criticisms of Kendall Square is it’s not as linked with the rest of the city. You have these glass and steel towers and global firms, and then you have one of America’s oldest cities. I’d like to see [the Foundry building] play the role of a bridge between the two.”
Email: jcronin@thewarrengroup.com
