In Feud Over Nonprofit’s Deal With BioMed, Cambridge State Reps. Take Sides

Cambridge’s state officials have often abided by an unspoken rule to stay out of the rough-and-tumble of local politics. Even as contentious national issues take center stage in Monday night City Council meetings, the city’s delegation on Beacon Hill has largely remained above the fray.

That precedent quickly came crashing down last Monday, as two of Cambridge’s state representatives publicly stepped into opposite sides of an escalating dispute over a proposed partnership between a local nonprofit and major real estate developer that has quickly and loudly put residents at odds.

As local nonprofit leaders trade barbs over the deal, disagreements between state representatives Michael “Mike” L. Connolly and Marjorie C. Decker — Democrats who together represent many of the city’s 118,000-odd residents — have burst out into the open. The two weighed in during separate appearances at the City Council’s public comment period last Monday night, and in an email sent after his remarks and later obtained by The Crimson, Connolly slammed Decker’s role in opposing the nonprofit deal.

BioMed, one of the largest life science developers in the country, set its sights on an East Cambridge property eight months ago — offering $20 million to the city in community benefits in exchange for more relaxed height and space restrictions on the development.

This type of funding from developers is often centralized in the Community Benefits Fund to then be appropriated by the city, but BioMed struck a deal with a single group: East End House, one of Cambridge’s oldest nonprofits serving low-income residents.

As a part of the deal, the city would redistribute $1.2 million from the East End House’s city funding and an additional $500,000 to other nonprofits. But in an effort to stall the deal, a group of nonprofits is pushing the Council to revisit the terms of the agreement with BioMed in a “more inclusive and equitable process.”

In a letter to the Council, leaders of the Cambridge Community Center, Community Art Center, Economic Opportunity Committee, and Cambridge Dance Complex defended their opposition to the deal, which they said “was not built with equity in mind.”

“Most nonprofits did not pursue direct relationships with developers because they believed the Community Benefits Fund would serve as the fair and inclusive vehicle for resource allocation,” the four organizations wrote, adding that the East End House’s deal “raises legitimate concerns about equity and trust.”

In a Friday statement, Susan Lapierre, the chair of the East End House board of directors, pushed back on allegations that the arrangement was opaque or rushed, noting that community meetings to discuss the process have been held since December last year.

“To change the community benefits allocation now, at the last minute of a year-long process, would be unjust to both the community and the thousands of individuals and families we serve,” Lapierre wrote.

The East End House, which was at risk of closing without a permanent facility, has been in talks with BioMed since October. BioMed developers have held three open meetings to gather feedback from residents in the eight months since launching the project, and the project has come across the Council’s desk twice in the last month.

And in back-to-back appearances at City Hall, Connolly and Decker found themselves at odds in front of the Council.

Connolly, who represents East Cambridge, used his allocated two minutes of public comment to urge nonprofits to “lift each other up, not tear each other down.”

In an email sent to the City Council on Sunday, he wrote that the nonprofits attempting to block the deal had engaged in personal attacks against East End House leaders and condemned “the most crass, cynical, and false claims made about the East End House.”

Connolly suggested that the backlash against East End House, a community center whose clients are primarily people of color, had become “racially charged.” He argued that the nonprofit’s current property was deteriorating unsustainably, and that it would be shortsighted to reject the plan, under which East End House would create a new community center in East Cambridge and redevelop its existing site as housing.

“As a city, we cannot reward this unfortunate attempt to pit neighborhood against neighborhood, to pit vital nonprofit organization against vital nonprofit organization, and to disregard the history, context, facts, and legally-binding ordinances that govern development in Cambridge and how community benefits are made available and for what purposes,” Connolly wrote.

But while nonprofit leaders pointed fingers in email blasts and public comment, Decker, speaking in support of groups who she said felt left out of the zoning negotiation, took aim at the City Council.

“My concerns are not with the community. It’s not even with the organization that would have an extraordinary benefit here,” Decker said. “It’s with the leadership that says, ‘Where was the city in bringing people in through this process, in the structures that exist already to defuse this?’”

“There are no winners, but a lot of people will lose, and it’ll be people who felt like they, in good faith, spent the last year working on this,” Decker added, “or it’ll be people who felt like they were never engaged and included in the process and should have been.”

Several hours after his appearance at the Monday night meeting, Connolly wrote that Decker and city nonprofits opposed to the deal had “fueled a very disingenuous freak out” in an email to former councilor Quinton Y. Zondervan that was obtained by The Crimson.

In response, Decker wrote in a Tuesday statement that “raising these important and legitimate concerns about the process should not be weaponized.”

“It would serve our community better to focus on whether this represents best practices and avoid any tactics that provide distraction from conversation and the issue before the Council,” she added.

BioMed and city staff had yet to finalize the terms of the zoning agreement by the Monday meeting, so the Council tabled the discussion until its next meeting in early August.

“Compromise. Work together. Don’t dig your heels in, and I think we’ll get to a better place,” Vice Mayor Marc C. McGovern said on Monday, urging the feuding nonprofits to arrive at an agreement by next month.

—Staff writer Matan H. Josephy can be reached matan.josephy@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @matanjosephy.

—Staff writer Laurel M. Shugart can be reached at laurel.shugart@thecrimson.com. Follow them on X @laurelmshugart.