All About the Alewife Area

From Dave Brigham:

In my last post, I ended my review of North Cambridge at Jerry's Pond, a former clay pit/swimming hole within sight of Alewife station, a bus and subway terminal run by the MBTA (see December 3, 2022, "Tip-toeing Through North Cambridge"). The pit was contaminated from years of use by both the brickmaking industry that flourished in the area in the 1800s, and the nearby chemical companies of the 20th century. In 1961, Jerry's Pond was closed to the public.

I pledged in the North Cambridge post to further explore the Alewife area, as I was curious about the companies that polluted the pond, as well as what the area once looked like, and what it will become in the near future.

Here's what I found.

As I mentioned in the North Cambridge piece, W.R. Grace & Co. manufactured chemicals in a plant just steps away from Jerry's Pond for 40 years. Other companies conducted similar operations prior, leaving the site contaminated with asbestos, among other things. According to the Alewife Study Group, from 1919 to 1940 Dewey and Almy Chemical Co. manufactured rubber and rubber-based products at a facility along Whittemore Avenue, a short distance from Jerry's Pond.

(Ghost sign chiseled into a brick building where Dewey and Almy once operated. Seen from Harvey Street, which is close to Russell Field, a football and soccer complex built over contaminated ground.)

By the mid-1960s, W.R. Grace had acquired Dewey and Almy and then phased out the chemical company's work at the North Cambridge site. In the late '80s, the Cambridge Planning Board granted a special permit for an office complex to be built on the former Grace site. Over the years, other developments were proposed for this area. I'm not clear on the age of the buildings that were on the site as of the beginning of this year, and how much, if any, clean-up work Grace may have done or paid for.

In 2020, IQHQ, a life sciences real estate development company, acquired the former Grace site, with plans to construct new buildings and "safely expand public access for the area surrounding Jerry’s Pond," according to a press release the company issued.

As I found out on my expedition, demolition for that project is well under way.

Known as Alewife Park, the development will update two existing buildings, as well as construct three structures, all to be used as office and/or lab space. In addition, the developers will add a "landscaped promenade" through the site; restore the MBTA's Alewife headhouse plaza; improve public access around Jerry's Pond; and improve stormwater management, per the project's web site.

After checking out the IQHQ site, I mosied on over toward Alewife station.

(Tunnel under the Alewife Brook Parkway, with the MBTA station in the background.)

(Shopping carts in a retention pond near the headhouse plaza that IQHQ has pledged to restore.)

(One of several entrances to Alewife station.)

I walked along the Alewife Linear Path, which skirts along the northern edge of the station complex and leads to the Minuteman Bikeway. From there, I saw Yates Pond, one of several small bodies of water in this area.

This is a good time to talk about water and about alewives.

An alewife is a fish, specifically "a diadromous species, meaning they migrate between fresh water and salt water to complete their life cycle," according to the Mass. Division of Marine Fisheries. "Alewife populations are considered depleted on the east coast," the DMF continues on its web site. "Recreational and commercial harvest of alewives was prohibited by DMF in 2006 out of concern over their status."

The Alewife Brook Reservation, a wetlands and recreational area situated just north of the MBTA station, runs from Belmont to Cambridge to Arlington to Somerville. The reservation includes Little Pond, Alewife Brook and the Little River, which runs east to the Mystic River. Squeezed between office parks, a bike path, residential neighborhoods, very busy roads, industrial areas and recreational fields, the reservation was established in 1900. "The Alewife Brook was straightened and channelized next to the parkway between 1909 and 1912, with road construction completed by 1916," per Wikipedia.

Prior to road construction and the development of commercial and residential properties, this area was part of what was known as the Great Swamp. "It was known for its Alewife, and there was an important weir near what is now the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Massachusetts Route 16," per Wikipedia. "Most of the swamp was drained and developed as farmland, then mining for brick clay, tanneries, and landfill."

I will talk below about just how much development has come to this area in recent years. For now, let's get back to the MBTA station and adjacent walking path.

At the beginning of what's known as the Fitchburg Cutoff Bikepath, in the shadow of a disused entry ramp to the train station's parking garage, there are some lovely paintings on electrical boxes.

The path runs into Belmont, ending at Brighton Street, hard by the commuter train tracks.

(The aforementioned shuttered entrance to the MBTA garage.)

(Graffiti on the wall of the parking garage; litter, including a bike, in the foul water.)

Naturally, I had to walk along the main path, as well as a side route that allows one to commune just a little bit with nature, as opposed to the backsides of buildings and so many walkers and joggers.

(View to the north of an office park that includes biotech and research firms.)

"Forebay Inlet 335 Acres," this tunnel under the bikepath is marked. A forebay is, simply put, an artificial pool of water in front of a larger body of water. They can be used in flood control, which I'm guessing is this inlet's function, given that it's surrounded by a river and brooks and ponds and wetlands, and the area just to the south of this forebay has been built up to fill just about every inch between the bikepath and the commuter train tracks.

So let's talk about all that development.

While a number of residential and commercial construction projects rose in the Alewife triangle between 1998 and 2013, it was in 2014 that the square footage volume in the area exploded, according to a Cambridge City Council Transportation Committee report from 2014. That year, more than 700,000 square feet of residential properties was built in the form of large apartment/condo buildings. From 2015 onward, nearly 600,000 square feet of apartment buildings were on the docket.

I've been unable to confirm the square footage total of all the buildings in this area. Looking at Google Maps, I count at least 15 buildings, all of them quite large, filling this area, in addition to the MBTA station and some smaller buildings housing a restaurant, a dance studio, a church and a childcare center. Many of the newer residential buildings have restaurants in them, as well as pools outside. But there is no "neighborhood" feel here, with small shops, a grocery store (there is a Whole Foods very close by), a school, a playground, a library, etc.

I imagine that the aforementioned smaller buildings, which are surrounded by a large parking lot, will be redeveloped at some point.

(Looking west on Cambridgepark Drive, from near the Alewife MBTA station, past multiple commercial and residential sites.)

If you know the Alewife area, you know traffic is a major concern. Just north of the MBTA station, Route 2 meets up with the Alewife Brook Parkway in a formation that, from above, looks a bit like the Mind Flayer from "Stranger Things," and can be almost as scary. Route 2 is a major feeder from the west into Cambridge, Somerville, Arlington, Medford and Boston. It connects with Route 128, a major north-south highway. In addition to the MBTA station, the parkway runs past the Fresh Pond Mall and connects to the Fresh Pond Parkway on its way to Watertown and toward Newton. This is a busy nexus.

As a post on the Fresh Pond Residents Alliance web site put it on May 25, 2014, "So why are we galloping ahead to develop every buildable parcel along this fragile area? The southern end of the Reservation is sandwiched between Cambridge Park Drive and Acorn Park Drive, where millions of square feet of residential and office space are encroaching. Within just a couple of years there will be 1,562 apartments on Cambridge Park Drive (sic), a dead end street bounded by the Fitchberg (sic) commuter rail tracks on one side and the Reservation’s wetlands on the other. The street’s sole outlet is onto gridlock-prone Route 2 at the already D-rated Rindge Avenue intersection."

Jan Devereux, a West Cambridge resident who founded the Fresh Pond Residents Alliance in 2014, said in a December 29, 2014, Boston Globe article about this very topic, "The planning process in Cambridge is broken...The city allows these projects to be planned and approved one at a time, instead of looking at how you build out an entire neighborhood and a city as a whole.”

I'm surprised that Cambridge, with a well-known progressive government, populace and history (it's known as the People's Republic of Cambridge in some circles), allowed this corner of the city to become dominated by faceless corporate buildings and residential towers. And with new lab/office space slated for the old W.R. Grace site nearby, traffic is sure to become more miserable. Maybe the eggheads in those offices can figure out a solution, such as a mini-Hyperloop.

But of course, traffic isn't the only concern, as was pointed out in the same Fresh Pond Residents Alliance post cited above: "A state park, the 120-acre Alewife Brook Reservation is part of the Mystic River floodway; it is our safety valve when — not if — we experience one of those 100-year storms. Even a 'mere' Category 1 hurricane would flood the entire Alewife area as well as parts of East Arlington, North and West Cambridge. And that’s not even taking into account the certainty of rising sea levels and the possibility of a major storm arriving during a full moon at high tide."

The point here being that if the waterways and wetlands of the Alewife Brook Reservation aren't maintained and, perhaps, opened up, this area of Cambridge could end up looking like Kevin Costner's "Waterworld."

We won't finish this tour of the Alewife area on a high note, but it will be slightly less depressing than the potential for this area of Cambridge to turn into a waterbound "Mad Max."

There used to be a Bertucci's restaurant here, in the subway station. Was for years. I went there several times to meet friends or eat with my wife and kids. Unfortunately, this location of the local Italian eatery chain closed in September 2020. I have to believe that with all the office/lab workers and residents literally steps away, something will fill this space before too much longer.

There's your optimism.