City Council Rezones East Cambridge

The City Council completed rezoning in East Cambridge last night, nearly finishing the citywide zoning process that has already stretched over several years.

In the process, the council completely redefined the North Point neighborhood, a move which council members say will bring together public transportation and affordable housing in a previously industrial area.

Zoning, which manages city development details ranging from the heights of buildings to the balance of industry and housing, has become a city priority in recent years.

East Cambridge—the neighborhood zoned last night—is crucial to the rezoning process since it is both large, stretching from Kendall Square to the Charles River, and in transition, widely cited as the area of Cambridge that zoning could most shape.

“I can’t tell you the excitement that has built in me at the propect of creating a whole new neighborhood [in North Point],” said Councillor Kathleen L. Born, who co-chaired the committee that brought the bill to the floor. “We are creating a whole new urban village.”

The North Point neighborhood could include several public parks as well as a brand-new link between the Green and Orange T lines, Born said.

“This is not going to be a neighborhood where people have to get into their cars to either go to work or go to the store,” Born said.

Born cited the current setup of Kendall Square—with its tall buildings and lack of nightlife—as an example of how Cambridge should not be zoned.

“I know North Point will not be like that,” Born said.

And throughout newly zoned East Cambridge, minimum housing requirements and caps on commercial growth will shape the neighborhood, Councillor David P. Maher said.

Councillors cited the zoning—which came out of an 18-month long, 18-member Eastern Cambridge Planning Study—as being historic both for the way it was done as well as for the housing the zoning will create.

The rezoning process included a committee of neighborhood, business and city representatives, who met during an 18-month moratorium on zoning East Cambridge.

“The legacy of tonight’s vote will not be the zoning but also the process,” councillor Jim Braude said.

Since the beginning of 2001, comprehensive zoning has passed for every part of the city except for one smaller parcel in Cambridgeport.In other council business, the members decided to change the topic of next week’s roundtable discussion from Cambridge’s census data to security planning in light of fears following the Sept. 11 attacks.

But City Manager Robert W. Healy said too much discussion of the issue might compromise the city’s ability to protect itself.

“There’s a point when you discuss security and it’s no longer secure,” Healy said.

But he agreed to the roundtable.

“We will shift gears and go from census data to security data,” he said.

Cambridge has its bases covered, Healy said, adding that the city’s Emergency Management department will receive an award next Thursday for being the premier department in the state.

—Staff writer Lauren R. Dorgan can be reached at dorgan@fas.harvard.edu.