This was like “the impossible dream,” gushed Councilor Brian Murphy.

“Well done!” shouted Councilor Marjorie Decker. The Police Dept. “needs a beautiful building” like this.

It was so “wonderful everyone agrees,” said Councilor Henrietta Davis.

There had been talk for some years about the supposed need for a new police station. Recently, Police Department reps had been showing up at neighborhood meetings to make their case for abandoning the Central Square headquarters. They listened to comments, but they did not take notes.

Healey said they would take 300 Bent Street by eminent domain, making "a good offer that shouldn't be contested in court."

$29 million for the land owner.

Another $20 or $30 million to reconfigure the building's interiors.

Councilor David Maher, whose father before him was a City Councilor and a Cambridge cop to boot, hoped that this would have “as little impact as possible on taxes.”

Councilor Anthony Galluccio was sure that money would pose no problem. “Due to the tremendous increase of our property values, taxes should be stable,” said the garrulous Gooch, who was ecstatic with praise for the City Manager. How wonderful it will be to have a station with so much “square footage… to get to meet the youth of the city”—many of whom, presumably, would find themselves inside at one time or another.

The only councilor to express the slightest reservation about the new station was Ken Reeves. He hoped that it would not be as forbidding as the new Boston police headquarters building; he hoped that it would have some windows.

But no, actually, said Healy, police stations nowadays were “potential targets for um, bad things… to be more protective of the um, activities taking place in the building… makes it easier if you have more of a concrete fortress….”

Location, location

No official responded to Stash Horowitz, who expressed the concern of the Association of Cambridge Neighborhoods, at the lack of public process.

No official betrayed any knowledge of recent neighborhood meetings, where residents had told the police reps that they wanted the police station to stay in Central Square.

The City Manager, who resides in Lowell, reassured the councilors and himself that it doesn’t matter where the station is located. But in a way, it does. It is only possible “to site something like this in Cambridge without a huge outcry,” because nobody lives very close to it.

The councilors girded up their loins to do battle—against the people.

Gooch knew that “there are folks who really believe in a centrally located station.” Those folks did not understand that the “realities of the technological advances in public safety” had made public access a non-issue.

Decker knew, too. She grew up in Cambridgeport. Her concern was to “find a way to tell the Central Square neighborhoods that they weren’t losing anything.”

Davis said: “Now I think we really need to present the project to the public.”

At the City Council's April 25 meeting, Councilor Galluccio introduced an order to name the new station after City Manager Robert Healey, who “took us through turbulent times of rent control that divided the city… you make our jobs easy… the greatest city manager this city has ever had and ever will have.”

Except for the absent Decker, the whole city council voted, like some petty dictatorship, to name a concrete fortress after their unelected leader.

They gave unanimous consent to go ahead with a project that will cost 50 to 70 million dollars, without any study to determine whether it might be cheaper to fix up the existing facility.

And in doing this, they sweetened some sour real estate for some very sweet people.

Bent Street odyssey

For 300 Bent Street, the City of Cambridge will pay $29 million to CEM Realty Trust, Paul Lohnes and Charles Laverty.

Paul Lohnes and Charles Laverty are also owners of 100 Banks Street, 205, 247 and 255 Bent Street, 134 Charles Street, 190 Fifth Street, 200 First Street, 79 Fulkerson Street, 1771 Mass. Ave, 1923-1925 Mass. Ave, 2150-2170 Mass. Ave, 91 Montgomery Street, 2-8 and l-7 Newport Road, 92 Rice Street, 141-143 Rindge Ave, 137 Sixth Street, 100 Smith Place, and 227 Third Street.

Former City Assessor Charles Laverty has done real estate with several North Cambridge politicians. Paul Lohnes uses the services of Gilman, McLaughlin & Hanrahan. The McLaughlins have been prominent in Cambridge politics for three generations. C. Brendan Noonan, perhaps the city’s most prominent realtor, is involved too.

Paul Lohnes is both a trustee and a beneficiary of CEM Realty Trust. CEM took over the Bent Street property in 1998 and leased it out to a telecomminications firm called XCOM. Within weeks, XCOM was gobbled up by a bigger telecoms firm called Level 3.

Lohnes unsuccessfully sued his new tenants, Level 3, because he felt they had screwed him in a stock-option deal which he had had with XCOM.

In March 2001 the Cambridge Planning Board granted 300 Bent Street a Special Permit. As a telecoms development, it was exempted from contributing to the City’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

CEM also got a feasibility study done for the Bent Street site in 2001. This was paid for by the Renewable Energy Trust Fund—whose money comes from surcharges on electricity consumers.

The Bent Street study summarized the woes of developers like CEM, who had jumped into the dot-com boom just before it went bust. “…struggling facility operators seek to fill buildings to meet their debt service, prospective tenants are seeking concessions on either terms or rent. …what once looked like the land of promise is quickly turning into a wasteland, as profits vanish, revenues slump, stocks plummet, and companies go belly-up.”

CEM's plan to lease “approximately 10,000 square feet spread out over sections of the 2 story underground garage” to a power plant developer seemed unlikely to succeed.

In 2002, the City reminded Lohnes about street improvements he had failed to carry out under CEM’s 2001 Special Permit. In 2003, a City inspector denied 300 Bent a Certificate of Occupancy.

The $29 million that the City will pay for the site is probably twice what CEM has invested in it.