The City’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund was one of the bidders. City Manager Robert Healy chairs that Fund.

The City’s bid was too low.

Some residents hoped that the winning developer, Paul Ognibene, would be a sensitive kind of guy because he lived only a few streets away. Some concerned neighbors were architects and developers themselves.

Ognibene proved to be rather a tough nut, though. First of all, he hired Jim Rafferty, who represents nearly every real estate developer who wants to know how to get around the public process in Cambridge.

Our observer thinks that Ognibene likely incorporated points in his initial proposal meant only to be “bargained away.”

Thus, when people expressed concerns about his plan to replace the Rectory with a parking lot, he dropped it. Then people questioned the impact of fifty new apartments on traffic and parking, and he replied, “We’re not proposing to go back to parking lots, but if you care about parking, we will go back.”

As usual, the developer commissioned a traffic study to prove that there was plenty of space for more cars in the neighborhood.

As usual, Susan Clippinger, the City’s traffic expert, stamped the study with her approval.

Everyone got to testify at the Planning Board’s first hearing. Then—as usual— the proposal was altered. No testimony was allowed at the January 3 meeting where the vote was taken.

Thus the Planning Board voted, as usual, to approve what the neighbors never got to testify about, but they have to live with.

The rear of the Church structure is now windowless at ground level. Under the Ognibene plan the windows on the second and third floors become balconies.

Our observer said that, of the Planning Board members, only Jennifer Molinsky expressed any sympathy with the neighbors’ privacy concerns.

The Board’s chair, Tom Anninger, was openly dismissive—you’re in the city, he essentially said—you can’t expect privacy.

Here’s the big picture

Zoning changes, made by the city council in 2001, ensured maximum build-out for the project.

Hugh Russell, architect and member of the Planning Board, worked on the Growth Management petition which culminated in the 2001 zoning revisions. “The council deserves high praise,” he wrote at the time. “I am impressed and amazed at how much we have accomplished together.”

Ognibene told the neighbors that, apart from the subsidized units required under the City’s inclusionary zoning law, the new residents would have “very high incomes.”

They should, according to the 2002 Urban Ring study—a 46 percent population increase was projected for Cambridgeport in 20 years. Cambridgeport, North Point, and Kendall Square must host “the region’s on-going growth in higher income populations.” Bridge readers may be interested in this little flash back.

In January 1970, Father Richard Butler of Blessed Sacrament Parish testified in the State Legislature about “the people who disappear,” and about the urgent need to institute rent control. Out of a total of 800 families in the parish, 200 had left since the previous January. In checking their reasons for leaving, he found that more than 90 percent had left because of major rent rises.

Rent control came too late for those families. The parish also suffered from the threat of the Inner Belt highway and MIT’s takeover of the industrial half of Cambridgeport