MBTA general manager Phillip Eng has a $155 million problem on his hands: the crumbling Alewife parking garage.
Next week, Eng will turn to the development industry to solve it.
The T is dangling the opportunity to build on 13 acres in and around the Alewife Station — in a key spot at the end of the Red Line, where Route 2 enters Cambridge — and is sweetening the pot by offering another 20 or so acres next door that will free up after commuter rail maintenance and repair operations are relocated to Billerica. It’s still too early to envision what could go there, but T officials are hoping for one of the biggest transit-oriented developments in the country to take shape, while also providing enough parking to accommodate the commuters who rely on the garage today.
The five-story garage first went up when the Red Line was extended to Cambridge’s outer limits in the 1980s. Waves of office, lab, and apartment buildings have since risen on the once-industrial land around it. More big changes are expected, with lab developer IQHQ recently starting work on a complex across Alewife Brook Parkway and Healthpeak Properties preparing for a massive mixed-use redo of its 36 acres on the south side of the commuter rail tracks that slice through the area.
Now, the T’s giant garage could represent the next step in the area’s evolution. In many ways, the 2,700-space garage’s waterlogged concrete is an accident waiting to happen. In fact, one already did: In 2018, a chunk of concrete fell and smashed a parked car, prompting a flurry of emergency repairs. The T has since shored up the structure, saying it’s safe for now, thanks to continuous maintenance. But the hulking structure eventually needs to be torn down and the parking replaced.
A demolition and rebuild would cost at least $155 million, per a 2021 estimate. But Scott H. Bosworth, the T’s director of transit oriented development, said the T has no money in its capital plan for that. So Bosworth and Eng decided to seek a developer who would pay to tear down the garage and rebuild parking for the T under a long-term lease for the broader acreage.
Bosworth believes the T’s land in and around the station offers the potential for development, likely spread over multiple buildings, that will far exceed the size of the million-square-foot garage there now. He also said he’s hopeful that Cambridge officials would allow at least one tower on the site, possibly as tall as the three 22-story Rindge Towers across the parkway from the garage.
The MBTA is still drawing up the criteria to rate developers. Factors will likely include experience with developing complex projects, financial capacity, and market knowledge. The process gets kicked off on Aug. 8, when T officials will host a forum to meet with interested firms. Bosworth hopes the T can pick a developer this winter. The T would then work with the winner to plan the project from the outset — a first for the T. The theory: this allows the T to benefit from private-sector resources and expertise early on, while avoiding a trap that has previously ensnared other developers of public sites who later realized their proposals no longer made economic sense.
As for who might bite this time, Healthpeak and IQHQ are obvious contenders, given their holdings in the area. Davis Companies and Cabot, Cabot & Forbes also have experience there, and would likely give it a look.
Cabot, Cabot & Forbes chief executive Jay Doherty says his firm studied the garage closely a few years ago when he was planning a project there. But the city denied his firm’s rezoning request and its plan to build a pedestrian and bike bridge over the tracks, so he sold the land his firm controlled to Healthpeak. Doherty said it’s hard to know if he would reconsider the garage site until he has more details from the MBTA, but no matter how it happens, replacing the garage will be one of the most challenging public infrastructure projects in the region.
Much of the garage would need to be taken apart in pieces, all while maintaining train service and working with the T to find replacement parking for the spaces that would be lost during construction. Then there’s the possibility that soil in the area could be contaminated. Add the relatively high interest rates to the mix, plus Cambridge’s 20-percent affordable housing requirement, and the redevelopment of Alewife becomes a complicated financial puzzle.
Bosworth is well aware of the challenges ahead, but he believes an enterprising developer would find this opportunity to invest in Cambridge’s future growth too good to pass up. The primary goal: getting rid of the garage and replacing it with parking within a new development. Bosworth also hopes the deal could lead to a revenue-sharing approach that enables the T to share in any profit. Demolition could start as soon as 2025. And Bosworth expects permitting could be done in roughly one year — an aggressive timeline that reflects the fact Cambridge city officials will also be at the table from the start.
T officials still need to determine exactly how many spaces they need there, working with the developer and city officials. The garage remains a valuable nexus for suburban commuters north and west of Boston — up to 1,400 of them on a busy weekday — who drive closer to the city and then take the subway the rest of the way to work.
Ideally, nothing would remain of the old water-stained bunker. In its place: a new, modern garage with a nicer train station, surrounded by apartments and street-level stores and restaurants.
That’s the vision, anyway. A vibrant, mixed-use complex that’s far more inviting than the concrete monstrosity that looms over the station today. Now, the T just needs to find the right developer who thinks it’s a smart business opportunity as well.
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.