Council To Address Central Sq. Issues

An e-mail from a concerned mother alleging that Central Square is “overrun with drunks, drugs, drug deals and scum” dominated the discussion at last night’s Cambridge City Council meeting, as council members discussed potential changes to the infrastructure of the neighborhood.

Though Councillor Kenneth E. Reeves ’72 said that the e-mail might simply be a “suburban overreaction to the diversity of Central Square,” he proposed that the city could benefit from an official assessment of the area.

“Central Square is, for many people both in and out of Cambridge, a central point of interaction within the City, owing to the many transportation lines that run through the square,” Reeves said. “There is erosion, and we have to address it.”

Reeves said that he hopes that the city will open a discussion on living conditions in Central Square, which has not seen a large-scale renovation since 1990 when the city spent around $3.5 million to revitalize the neighborhood.

Just last month, the Boston Consulting Group released a report on the state of Kendall Square, Reeves said.

Central Square’s most pressing problems range from a high poverty level to insufficient police presence to “move along various nefarious activities on and around the benches,” Reeves said.

Other council members at the meeting agreed that the city needs to address the problems in Central Square.

“It looks quite messy and even threatening,” Vice Mayor Henrietta Davis said. “We need to take more aggressive steps. We need to advocate for the citizens.”

Former Mayor E. Denise Simmons added that the City Council currently does not have a specific economic plan to develop Central Square.

“What I’m going to be looking for is some sort of aggressive plan to make sure that Central Square is the center of the Cambridge, which its name implies,” Simmons said.

Other topics discussed at the meeting included the dedication of a suitable location in the vicinity of Callendar Street in honor of Mrs. Mildred E. Best, the availability of public meeting space at Cambridge Main Library and other library related issues, a possible meeting of various stakeholders in the Central Square community for the purpose of discussing and reviewing current action plans for Central Square, an evaluation of Grozier Road, which has a number of road defects, for resurfacing and repair, and a request that the Massachusetts Legislature ot conduct an independent cost-benefit analysis of Level III gambling in Massachusetts.

—Staff writer Rediet T. Abebe can be reached at rtesfaye@college.harvard.edu.