Forest City Enterprises is filing a petition with the City of Cambridge to build a new 250,000-square-foot office and laboratory building on Massachusetts Avenue.
Pharmaceutical manufacturer Millenium Pharmaceuticals wants to erect the building at 300 Massachusetts Ave. It would have retail space on the ground floor and would accommodate an expansion of 230,000 square feet of additional operations of Millennium Pharmaceuticals. Millennium has about 1,200 employees in Massachusetts and occupies space in six other buildings within University Park.
"We were strongly encouraged by city officials and residents concerned about the future of the Central Square area to refile our petition," Forest City Boston President Frank Wuest said in a statement. "This expression, combined with the conclusion of the Central Square Advisory Committee’s recent intense work, led us to conclude the right thing to do was to move forward with the 300 Mass. Ave. project."
Forest City executives said that if fully permitted by the city and when completed the new building would provide jobs and add 15,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space to the neighborhood, one of the primary goals of the year-long Central Square planning process.
Forest City also filed a "letter of commitment" along with its zoning petition that promised the preservation of the 168 affordable apartments in University Park, to remain affordable on a long-term basis, and pledged to create an additional 20 units of affordable housing in the city. The developer also pledged over $1 million in payments to the city to be used for additional community benefits.
The filing of the petition for 300 Mass. Ave. comes following two separate year-long public planning processes for sustainable and appropriate development around the Central Square area of Cambridge. The + Red Ribbon Commission on the Delights and Concerns of Central Square, chaired by Councilor Ken Reeves, was completed last year, and the Central Square Advisory Committee just finished its intensive work.
The Cambridge City Council in August took no action on zoning changes to allow development of Forest City’s new life sciences building, where Millennium had announced plans to lease 230,000 square feet of space, adding to the approximately 500,000 square feet that company occupies in the University Park area already.
