New Hotel's Planners Face Access Charges

A Harvard faculty member's architectural firm--which designed the newly opened Cambridge Center Marriott hotel in Kendall Square--will go before a state review board early next month to face charges that the building does not conform to state handicapped access laws.

Moshe Safdie, Ian Woodmer Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, is president of the firm that will go before the state Architectural Barriers Board to respond to charges that the firm's design limits handicapped persons' access to the facilities.

Among the charges, which were filed with the board by state Sen. Jack H. Backman (D-Brookline) and state Rep. A. Joseph DeNucci (D-West Newton), are that the building, which opened last week, does not allow sufficient handicapped access to seating in the two restaurants of the Marriott complex, is missing railings on stairways, and has several too-narrow door frames.

State law requires all public buildings and facilities to be 100 percent accessible to handicapped persons except in special cases.

"They are major violations," said Bruce Bruneau, project coordinator of the Community Access Monitors Program (CAMP) which monitors and reports on handicapped access in public facilities throughout the state.

Bruneau said he personally inspected the complex, which includes a 431-room hotel, two restaurants, and 10,000-square-foot ballroom, and found significant violations of the access law.

Bruneau said that the restaurants in the Marriott complex use split level floor arrangements that limit handicapped use of seating because no ramps or elevators are available to move from level to level.

"It's going to cost them at least another $50,000 to bring them to compliance," he said.

Bruneau said "the architects are at fault because they should have known the law," although he admitted that the Cambridge building inspector should have noted the violations earlier.

But Safdie, who has been at Harvard since 1978, said that the charges are unfair and over-publicized. "It's obvious that somebody wants publicity for this," he said.

Sadfie said that before designing the Marriott building, his firm looked at many other Boston restaurants and hotels and designed their building in accordance with what they saw. He said many Boston restaurants do not conform to the state's 100 percent handicapped access law.

He said he thought his firm was being unfairly singled out.

"I resent people walking around saying we don't care about the handicapped," he said.

According to Safdie, his firm agreed to rectify the violations as soon as they were discovered, but despite these assurances, the violations were publicly criticized by Bruneau and Backman.

He said the firm would apply for three waivers to the law and would redesign parts of the restaurants if the Architectural Barriers Board refused to grant the exceptions.

Bruneau said he doubted Safdie's firm would be granted the waivers, which are usually only granted when making the required changes would be economically or technically infeasable.

Backman's legislative assistant, David Barenberg, said he did not see any reason for the board to grant a waiver.

"The building was built completely in violation [of the law], why was that done? All we know is that the architect says that they screwed up because they didn't know about the law," he said.