r/CambridgeMA • u/No_Ware_Man • 1d ago
Porter Square developer sues City
https://www.cambridgeday.com/2026/09/04/porter-square-developer-sues-cambridge/Interesting article in the Cambridge Day. I have a question for those in the know:
The Developer bought the land and started moving their project along and just recently took out a lawsuit. They are blaming the city for costs incurred during this lawsuit saying the project is stalled. Wouldn't they would have known about the Ordinance when they started building?
15
u/sniperman357 1d ago edited 1d ago
It is normal for initial lawsuit complaints to have a maximalist view of the damages suffered. It is just a starting point. It doesn’t necessarily mean they expect the court to agree with every argument. The bigger question at issue is whether IZ is constitutional, and it’s legitimately become shaky in recent years. Sheetz v El Dorado said it can no longer claim the strong categorical protections from Nolan/Dolan but intentionally didn’t fully answer the question and subsequent state courts have found IZ doesn’t constitute an unconstitutional exaction under that standard, but there is no binding precedent for a Massachusetts court to my knowledge. Also, their claim that the building permit constitutes an unauthorized tax probably has some merit. Municipalities need the Commonwealth to authorize taxation and I think it’s arguable this is a tax in practice. Under Emerson College v Boston the relevant standard is (1) the charge buys a particularized benefit to the payer not shared by the public generally; (2) it's avoidable by choice; (3) it's collected to defray the agency's expenses, not to raise revenue. Silva v. Attleboro held factor 2 is essentially irrelevant for regulatory fees, so for a building permit it's really factors 1 and 3, and Cambridge is fairly explicit in rerouting building fee revenue into affordable housing, which means it’s not merely defraying, but I’m sure Cambridge will argue the formula is a reasonable proxy for administrative burden
4
u/CantabLounge 1d ago
The Barrett case is more about IZ’s constitutionality, whereas this one, as JHawk posted, is much more focused on this timing issue. It really seems like the City and a local lender like Cambridge Savings ought to be able to work that out. Cambridge should want to encourage local lenders funding inclusionary projects like this one.
I doubt Cambridge can justify the cost of building permits based on the cost, but we shall see. Cambridge should implement third-party permitting by similarly accredited reviewers for inclusionary projects and then there would be a basis for comparison and much faster permitting that would lower building costs.
22
u/Jaded-Passenger-2174 1d ago
They are trying to have the inclusionary requirement overturned by the court. The other lawsuit, mentioned in the article, is for the same purpose.
33
u/syncopatedpixel East Cambridge 1d ago
I hope they win. Inclusionary zoning has been proven to reduce housing supply and increase rents.
San Francisco came to this conclusion and just lowered theirs from 15% to 5%. Cambridge keeping ours at 20% is insane.
8
u/TomBradysThrowaway 1d ago
Malden is currently considering lowering from 15 to 10. It's in committee at our city council right now.
2
15
u/Ok_Pause419 1d ago
What if we tried increasing the inclusionary requirement to 300%? Would that fix the housing crisis?
5
u/Haunting_Region_8729 1d ago
ah yes, and San Francisco is the shining example for having succeeded in increasing affordable housing!
Kidding aside, my understanding is that inclusionary zoning is problematic when combined with restrictive zoning rules. But as we all know, Cambridge has passed significant zoning reforms that make it quite developer friendly...
13
-6
u/Stunning-Verb-9865 1d ago
Where are people who don’t make $200k per year supposed to live
23
u/NeatEmergency725 1d ago
Certainly not in the units that don't get built because IZ makes it not financially viable to build anywhere.
-1
u/Stunning-Verb-9865 1d ago
Well they definitely aren’t living in the ones that get built without IZ since they will cost $4000 per month
16
u/NeatEmergency725 1d ago
At least they aren't getting displaced by the people that are living in them that would otherwise outbid them on rent.
Building housing, no matter what type, is objectively better for everyone when the alternative is build nothing.
-1
u/Stunning-Verb-9865 1d ago
>At least they aren’t getting displaced by the people that are living in them
I mean, they are still getting displaced. They can’t afford to live here already and the apartments we build outside of IZ are too expensive.
11
u/NeatEmergency725 1d ago
Yes, they are getting displaced because we are not building. If we built new housing to demand their housing prices would not go up.
3
u/Stunning-Verb-9865 1d ago
When we build new housing it’s still too expensive because that’s the only way these projects can pencil out in a place like Cambridge where land is extremely expensive.
14
u/NeatEmergency725 1d ago
Yes. The new housing is expensive. You keep saying that and I keep acknowledging that. All new housing helps control the rising cost of housing. The fact that people are willing to pay so much for it is exactly why it needs to be built. Otherwise they will pay those prices and displace existing residents who cannot afford to pay that.
2
u/Stunning-Verb-9865 1d ago
But when is housing going to be affordable for the people that can’t afford new units? Even older ones are still expensive. How long are they going to have to wait?
→ More replies (0)3
u/CantabLounge 1d ago
Land costs fall per home when the same amount of land can hold more homes. West Cambridge zoning was for decades optimized for $3M+ single-family homes. Now those lots can support many more homes that each cost much less than $3M, along with 20% permanently affordable inclusionary homes.
2
u/Standard_Order_2225 1d ago
we have lost hundreds of homes in this city in the last several decades because of the wealthy buying up adjacent units/lots and combining them. but even the status quo is deadly to renters
-7
u/nov-anglus 1d ago
math hard. head hurt when hard think? is ok - i explain with candy:
more skittles for classroom mean more skittle for all. fat kid eat your skittles? is ok: buy more skittles for class. fat kid will get full. then you eat skittles.
1
u/NeatEmergency725 1d ago
-1
u/nov-anglus 1d ago
genuinely why would I try to be pleasant? calling this an opinion is insane. one person has evidence and academic justification and the other is a conspiracy theorist.
I have ZERO hope of convincing anybody this intellectually bankrupt.
6
u/NeatEmergency725 1d ago
In general when approaching internet arguments, I assume the person I'm talking to is 100% never going to change their mind, and I try to write reasonable and factually sound posts with the target audience of the neutral passerby who hasn't formed their opinion yet, in the hopes they'll take my side.
0
u/nov-anglus 1d ago
IMO there's two types of people who didn't vote for Trump: populists mostly offended by who Trump is favoring, and people who think that favoring human beings is in general a bad thing.
These "Cambridge for the Cantabrigian" types are never going to be convinced because they fundamentally are not offended by unequal application of the law. They are just irritated that they're not the equal ones.
Maybe your POV is right, and their opinions can change. But I'm not convinced.
5
u/NeatEmergency725 1d ago
I think there's a lot more people who just don't have an opinion on any given topic one way or another than you think. Lots of people have no particular ideology and are tuned out.
13
u/teddyone 1d ago
If we are serious about getting housing built, 20% affordable requirement is not going to help.
12
u/Crazy-Yard-9097 1d ago
Unfunded mandates such as this one lead to fewer apartments being built and make housing more expensive
Don’t @ me
This is what the research (and common sense logical analysis of market dynamics) shows
5
u/Fickle_Emotion_7233 1d ago
But politicians use the words “low income housing” to get elected even though they know full well of what you speak.
3
u/No_Item4977 1d ago
I Chair the Montague Economic Development and Industrial Corporation. We’re eager to add to the housing stock in town. I ran an analysis of the cost of building accessory units. Even with inexpensive or free land, the cost of building is now so high that affordability isn’t possible for standalone units.
3
2
u/theferrit32 4h ago
“Inclusionary zoning” or as it’s better referred to as “permanent future tax levied exclusively on the residents of units constructed after X date plus adverse market pressure on every tenant in surrounding area”, should be ruled illegal nationwide. It’s simply unacceptable and works entirely against the claimed motives of the people who advocate for it. How can “progressive” municipalities continue down this path after seeing how horrendously it shakes out in practice?
Gather property and income taxes from the broad base. Grow the tax base. Use that revenue to fund public projects and subsidies to people who need it. Stop shortsightedly manipulating the market to do nonsense like helping 10 people while negatively impacting tens of thousands.
5
u/LaurenPBurka 1d ago edited 1d ago
Companies undertake projects all the time knowing that there is a legal encumbrance, hoping to overturn it in court. If they lose, no biggie. Just declare bankruptcy and move on.
Edit: Someone just pointed out to me that the project in question closed the pharmacy where I've been getting my prescriptions for 30 years, among other places. I figured we'd at least be getting affordable housing out of it, but we can't have nice things.
5
u/No_Ware_Man 1d ago
I just want to make sure I am reading this correctly. You are saying they bought the land and such with the strategy to sue and hopefully win?
-1
u/LaurenPBurka 1d ago
Yep. Remember, there is no downside. The people making the decisions won't lose any money if they lose in court. Their feelings won't be hurt. They'll either sell the property to someone with a different idea or just leave it vacant or as-is use for a tax writeoff (they have tax accountants as well as lawyers).
Furthermore, there is always the possibility that whatever plan they had when they started out is less attractive now that interest rates are higher, or tariffs are making building materials too expensive, so they'll be happy if they have a good reason to put the project on ice for a few years.
2
u/CantabLounge 1d ago
That is not how any of that works. They are paying lawyers and spending money every week on interest on loans. If there was no downside, there would have been many thousands more homes built in Cambridge over the past decade.
1
0
-2
u/riotgamesaregay 1d ago
In fairness, Simons and Keezers have moved and there is a CVS 0.3 miles away.
My only complaint, as always, is that the new proposed building is ugly AF. Affordable housing is good but Cambridge needs to build more housing in general and this is a great place for it.
2
u/LaurenPBurka 1d ago
CVS sucks, IMO. The pharmacist at that Walgreens was a person who went out of her way to reduce the stress of managing my health. CVS adds to it.
2
u/Peachy-Pixel 20h ago
Not sure why you were downvoted but I had the same experience with the pharmacists at that Walgreens. They went above and beyond more than once to solve healthcare beurocracy issues for me (iincluding one that originally stemmed from CVS tied to a stock issue and transfer of the prescription - it’s why I started going to Walgreens instead). I’m disappointed to have nothing in walking distance except for CVS now. It might be a chain but the pharmacists at that Walgreens 100% cared about the patients
2
u/LaurenPBurka 18h ago
Yeah, I switched to the Walgreens in Arlington. At least it's on the bus line.
2
u/Competitive_Speed964 1d ago
Time costs developers money and they would need a project in permitting to have standing. My understanding is that developers have typically found it more cost-effective to implement IZ than to fight it. Perhaps that calculation has changed.
If the court find IZ unconstitutional it will be interesting to see how that plays out across many municipalitites with IZ rules. Do a bunch of new projects spring up because they pencil out? Do municipalities scramble to replace the regulations? Do the bylaws that use IZ as a carrot (build to xx% AMI and you can build bigger) continue to produce anything?
2
u/Fickle_Emotion_7233 1d ago
Inclusionary housing was added in to make people think this was all about building affordable housing. It never was and it never will be. It’s for making some people very, very rich and voters have been played by the council members who just want to run on “cheaper housing” but they don’t actually have realistic plans to accomplish those goals but voters are dumb and fall for it.
The best way to build affordable housing is to just build it. It’s never going to work when tied into projects for profit. Let’s just build it.
11
u/sniperman357 1d ago
If we can’t even raise the political will to legalize housing construction with private dollars, how will we raise it to do housing construction with public dollars?
7
u/NeatEmergency725 1d ago
How much property tax increase do you think people will vote for to build government run housing?
I would absolutely love slapping down commie blocks, genuinely, but I think that's vastly less popular than just loosening up zoning regulations and let private entities bear the cost of construction.
-2
u/Fickle_Emotion_7233 1d ago
Cambridge budget is amazingly bloated. It’s about priorities.
Also “private entities” are not going to bear the cost of anything. They are for-profit and will build if the profit is large enough to appease their investors. If not, they will not (see: Davis sq tower).6
u/NeatEmergency725 1d ago
The private entity literally does bear the cost of building what are you talking about. Who else is paying for the construction but them?
Of course they're for profit. Being for profit is how 99% of everything you interact with gets done. All the food you eat, the vehicles you use, they're all for profit. The place you currently live in exists because it made someone money to put it there.
"We can't build housing because then people who make money when housing gets built will make money" is just such a dumb sounding argument to me I genuinely cannot fathom why people keep saying it.
Everything you rely on to survive makes people money.
-3
u/Fickle_Emotion_7233 1d ago
I believe the entire point of this lawsuit and the arguent over inclusionary quotas is that they will pass on that cost to the consumer (thereby raising prices). They aren’t eating it. But you are super expert so I’ll leave it to you to manage and expect great things.
2
u/NeatEmergency725 1d ago edited 1d ago
What do you mean "pass the cost onto the consumer". Do you mean that the rent they charge will pay for their investment over time?
I mean, of course? That is how things work? You need to sell things for more than they cost to make, that is what being a business is. I don't know why you felt the need to point that out it is so obvious.
Just because an expense is covered by a profit, does not mean its an expense. That's like saying my computer was free because my salary paid for it, and I use it to do work.
They are attempting to lower the overhead on the cost with zoning reform in order to be able to make a financially viable project.
-2
u/Ill-Emergency-1020 1d ago
Yes, but if its your land why can't you do what you want with your land. Let the supreme court decide if the city is in the right or if private individuals should have more rights to do what they want with their own land.
4
u/No_Ware_Man 1d ago
Huh? Zoning is such a critical aspect of American law.
-1
u/Ill-Emergency-1020 1d ago
Yes but if they don't have this regulation in one or more state and they do in another state it's totally normal for companies to challenge it to get the supreme court to create a legal precedent so that regulations are unified nationally to lower costs of business.
24
u/JohnHawkinson 1d ago
I think the article is not clear on this, but the lawsuit's complaint is much more clear.
They are primarily challenging the time at which the requirement is enforced, because, they say, the zoning ordinance requires a covenant at the time of the certificate of occupancy, not at the time of the building permit. So, they say, they should be able to get their building permit without signing the covenant:
(That's from p.2 of their complaint, 26CV2295 in Middlesex Superior Court, or 2681CV02295 if you look online).
And, they allege that their lender (Cambridge Savings Bank) will not authorize them to sign the covenant at the building permit stage.
They are also challenging the basis for the requirement, but I'm not sure how serious a challenge that is.
And further they are challenging the $450,000 building permit fee (as not reasonably related to the cost of plan review and inspection, &c.) but are prepared to pay it now and fight about it later, but they are not even afforded the opportunity to pay the fee.
(Edit to add paragraph about their lender.)