Urban Renewal

Last spring, after venomous and frenzied preliminaries unusual even for Cambridge, the City rejected, five to four, $5,500,000 of federal assistance to renew Donnelly Field in East Cambridge. Chief features of the 114 acre area are three auto junk yards and an abandoned school.

In December of 1957, when the Council unanimously approved of applying for Federal renewal money, it created the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority (CRA). The CRA was to plan and administer redevelopment in Cambridge. Until last Thursday, when the Federal Housing and Homes Agency closed the CRA's books, the Authority consisted of a committee of five Cambridge businessmen and lawyers, serving without pay, and a paid staff of five architects and planners.

The CRA's plans to refurbish Donnelly centered around 142 moderate income, non-profit apartment units which were to be built by the AFL-CIO. The projected rents of these units were well within the budget of the people then living in the area. Plans also called for 21,000 feet of new water mains, 16,000 feet of new sewer lines, 3,000,000 square feet of pavement and sidewalks, and two new playgrounds. At its completion, the project was to displace 337 families (15% of the Donnelly population).

But according to the CRA plans, those living in the even acres to be bulldozed could find immediate revocation in one of the new units, since the first of the three story buildings of the project were scheduled to be put up on an empty lot. Donnelly has no large Negro population. Thus the project was free of the sometimes ticklish problem of relocating Negro families in government housing. Moreover, a new $2,500,000 school already built in Donnelly Field made up the City's one third of the renewal costs; under the 1954 housing act, the FHHA share was to be two-thirds. In effect, Cambridge was getting $5,500,000 in municipal improvements is a gift.

But the City Council rejected the CRA's technically well-conceived plans for redevelopment and with them, $5,500,000. Why?

Today, nearly a year after the decision, the groups that were for and against renewal still accuse each other of scheming villainry. The CRA and its four councillors are convinced that "crackpots, rabblerousers, and short-righted politicians" defeated renewal in Cambridge. On the other hand, the residents of Donnelly Field and their five councillors think that "intellectuals" and "capitalistic cityers" were using redevelopment to exploit them again. The fact is that there were no villains--only some mis-handling and misunderstanding.

Members of the CRA were not diabolical capitalists, but they did see renewal primarily as a business proportion: an opportunity to improve the city's tax base and to attract industry. Of course, tax base is a legitimate concern of any community and is a part of any renewal program. Moreover industry moving out of Cambridge to Route 128 is understandably painful to the city's businessmen. Renewal would help to stop the exodus.

Credit must go to the CRA for keeping corruption but of renewal in Cambridge, no easy task in Massachusetts. It also organized the support of M.I.T, the city, the state, and the Federal government for the eminently successful Technology Square project and finished a smaller redevelopment program in Riverview.

In the two completed projects of the Authority very few people needed to be displaced or relocated; thus, the projects were essentially large business transactions. When the CRA moved into Donnelly, however, threatened to affect 337 families by levelling 93 privately owned buildings (most two and three story walk-ups). The CRA failed to realize that the approach used with the previous two projects was not going to work.

Apparently, the Authority did not expect any wide-spread opposition to its plans from people living in Donnelly. Since the CRA had merely a skeleton professional staff of five only token measures toward "communication and participation" with Donnelly were possible; very little CRA money was budgeted for getting grassroots support among the residents. The opposition which erupted at the public hearings took the CRA by surprise. Members of the CRA were quick to blame the resistance on a few rabblerousers, but the opposition reflected the way most of the people in Donnelly felt about the CRA project.

The CRA unwittingly organized this resistance by committing two early blunders. First, it hired off-duty firemen to inspect the buildings to determine if they met health and safety standards. The firemen were probably qualified to check building standards, but they could not answer the questions of anxious and frightened housewives about the renewal program itself. The question, "What's going to happen to my home and my family?" went unanswered.

Second, the CRA made a naive mistake when in its renewal plans it included refurbishments of the Irish Catholic Church in the area. Although Donnelly Field is almost all Catholic, the CRA did not know (perhaps because it did not take the trouble to find out) that the community is organized around two ethnic groups rather than a single religious one. The Donnelly Field Lithuanians accused the CRA of favoritism when nothing was planned for the Lithuanian Catholic Church. The plans were subsequently changed, but the insensitivity had permanently alienated most of the Lithuanians

The people of Donnelly possessed some distorted noitons about the project. They felt the Boston West End Development had been unjust and felt that they were going to get equally bad treatment.

The people asked the CRA to look at Washington Elms and Newtowne, two government housing projects of the 1930's and the only real slums in Cambridge. However, under present Federal housing provisions, Donnelly would not share the fate of Washington Elms or Newtone. The people also claimed that the CRA's Riverview project could not relocate the inhabitants into the high-rise luxury apartments with rents starting at $215 a month which would replace their homes. This charge was true.

A great many of the Donnelly residents thought that becoming tenants in government housing would be a step down from private ownership which they could never accept. It is strange that 85 per cent were tenants to begin with.

Class consciousness also affected Donnelly citizens' picture of renewal. Many East Cantabridgians fear that there is no adequate provision for their status and continued residence in Cambridge, that the "snooty institutionalists at Harvard and M.I.T." and the equally "snooty Brattle Street contingent" are scheming to push them out of the city. Urban renewal was just more land grabbing. One man said "On holidays, the streets of Donnelly Field are closed for processions and festivities. To let the city come in and destroy our way of life would be to let the godless people take over." The East Cantabridgians are "minutemen" organized to protect, as one Councillor put it, "their castles...their mansions...their little gardens." Of course, arguments upholding the public good against such defenses will do no good, but these defenses must be taken into account in planning and executing a renewal program.

The conflict between the CRA and the people of Donnelly Field led to the defeat of urban renewal in Cambridge. More discouraging now is the near lack of future for redevelopment in the City. The polarized attitudes that defeated renewal last spring still persist. Neither side will admit any wrong. Consequently nothing can really be worked out.

If, however, Cambridge is serious about reapplying for Federal renewal funds and is serious about actually spending the money on renewal here, the City must make some changes in approach.

In future projects, the CRA (or any equivalent group must be sensitive enough to realize that the so called human problems of renewal are important. In other words, good public relations is crucial in order to make urban renewal work. The CRA was beaten last spring because it had no support from Donnelly, Cambridge neighborhood organizations, churches or the influential League of Women Voters.

Donnelly did not believe the City's strongest argument for renewal: neighborhood improvement. The municipal government itself rarely prosecutes infraction of zoning and building codes in a city full of infractions. An already messy Cambridge made it difficult for the CRA to consider providing Federal second mortgages to homes in Donnelly so that owners could improve them to meet existing municipal ordinances. But the CRA gave this alternative no consideration, even though provision for such mortgages is an important section of the Housing Act of 1954 under which the Authority worked. The prospect of spanking new buildings is exciting, but less spectacular improvements must do if nothing more can be had.