Judge Orders Cambridge to Rule on 1740 Mass. Ave. Permit by Nov. 6 as New Dashboard Shows How Slowly Upzoning Projects Are Finishing

A Superior Court judge has denied a developer's request to order the City of Cambridge to issue a building permit for a planned residential project at 1740 Massachusetts Ave., but has ordered the city to "render a decision" on the permit by Friday, Nov. 6, Cambridge Day reported.

Judge Sarah Weyland Ellis's decision, dated Oct. 22, was a single handwritten paragraph, according to the outlet. It came three weeks and three days after a Sept. 29 hearing involving the city and Old North Development, the developer of the project.

"We're just going to see what the city produces and we'll continue the process," Old North principal Adam Siegel said after the decision, according to Cambridge Day. Asked whether Old North had sought anything further from the city since the hearing, Siegel declined to comment. A city spokesperson said Cambridge was aware of the order and the requirement, the outlet reported.

The dispute centers on when the developer must sign the city's affordable housing covenant. The city has declined to begin formal processing of Old North's building permit application because the application has not cleared the Housing Department's pre-review step, according to Cambridge Day. The Housing Department has withheld that approval because Old North has refused to sign the covenant at the building permit stage.

Old North says its lender, Cambridge Savings Bank, has refused to authorize signing the covenant at that stage, and that the proper time is after the building is constructed, at the certificate of occupancy stage, the outlet reported.

As part of its refusal to begin formal processing, the city has also refused to accept Old North's payment of the $450,000 permitting fee, according to Cambridge Day. It is not clear whether the judge's order will lead the city to accept the fee, or whether the city will deny the permit for failure to obtain Housing Department sign-off, failure to pay the fee or another reason. The city spokesperson declined to comment on that question, the outlet reported.

Building permits in pre-review are not available on the city's open data portal or otherwise published online, but summary information about them now appears on a new Cambridge Housing Development Dashboard, Cambridge Day reported. Permit 1215527, for 1740 Massachusetts Ave., is listed there as "Active," a category that includes pre-review and under-review applications as well as issued permits for active projects.

The city unveiled the dashboard at the City Council's meeting Tuesday, Oct. 20, according to a separate Cambridge Day report. It was built in response to a policy order sponsored by Councilor Cathie Zusy seeking more public information about housing development.

Interest in development data has grown since the council passed the Multifamily Housing Ordinance in February 2025, a change the outlet describes as an upzoning. Residents have filed public records requests for permit information about new projects in their neighborhoods, the outlet reported, and others have contributed to a crowdsourced tracker organized by Zusy.

"An important thing in setting up this dashboard was that this is sustainable in the long term and this is something that can be relatively automated," Deputy Chief of Planning Jennifer Caira said at the meeting, according to Cambridge Day. The city plans to add more data, including links to permits that developers file.

The early numbers show a slow start, according to the outlet's review of the dashboard. Twenty projects have been completed since January 2025, most of them rehabilitations of existing buildings that added or subtracted one unit. In the pipeline are 136 permitted projects, and another 89 have submitted permit applications.

Only four projects that have received permits include inclusionary affordable units, one of them a 439-unit residential building under construction in Kendall Square, Cambridge Day reported. Fifteen more recent applications include such units, for a total of 19.

Most activity is in the C-1 residential district, the largest residential district in the city and the one where the ordinance most increased development potential, according to the outlet. Since January 2025, 19 projects have been completed in C-1, though some may have received permits before the ordinance took effect. The district has 113 permitted projects; some permits are for demolition, and it is not known what will be built on those lots. Of the 100 projects with new-build or rehabilitation permits, two include inclusionary units, two were permitted under the affordable housing overlay and one is a 100 percent affordable project with federal funding. Of 68 projects in the district with pending applications, five are 100 percent affordable housing and six include inclusionary units.

Zusy said her crowdsourced site offers more meaningful design and data tracking than the city's dashboard, according to Cambridge Day. It tracks only projects that change the number of units, keeps a 21-property watchlist of homes recently sold to developers and estimates the number of new units. Caira said the city is pulling from records that already exist "so we're not going through every file and pulling out some of the specifics," the outlet reported. The city has set up an email address, [email protected], for questions about specific projects.