Council Recommends Against Garage Permit

The Cambridge City Council last night recommended revoking the building permit for a 1530-car garage under construction in Kendall Square.

After a prolonged public hearing, the Council asked the Building Commissioner via the City Manager to suspend all parking garage building permits "until the legal status of these facilities is determined."

Since the Athenaeum Group began building at a site on Binney Street in East Cambridge last spring, the garage has been surrounded by controversy. Neighborhood residents charge that the facility violates a freeze on city parking that the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) imposed in 1973 under the Clean Air Act.

Cambridge has had state permission to approve new parking facilities since 1984, but the city did not file the necessary forms, said Debra McManus, a leader of opposition to the garage.

City Manager Robert W. Healy replied that he had "never knowingly violated the law" by failing to submit information to the state.

If opponents of the Binney Street garage can prove the city violated the Clean Air Act, every parking facility built since 1984 might also be illegal.

Furthermore, opponents of the garage say the city may have overestimated the number of parking spaces allowed under EPA limits, and they say a legal interpretation used to add 3500 new spaces may not be valid.

McManus and other residents of Linden Park, a residential community adjoining the Binney Street site, charged that city officials had colluded with developers, ignoring the interests of city residents.

Representatives of the Athenaeum Group argued in a position paper distributed last night that the parking freeze did not apply to their garage because they planned to use it for employees' and customers' cars without charging fees.

But several speakers noted that the developer could not pay off the garage's construction costs without charging fees.

"I'm sure that if you go to a bank and ask for $10,700,000, they will ask you immediately how you are going to pay that loan back," said Councillor Saundra Graham.

Healy said he discussed the garage problem last week with officials of the EPA and the state Department of Environmental Quality Engineering (DEQE). While the two agencies have not ruled on Cambridge's garages, they did send Healy a letter saying it would be "premature" to revoke the Binney Street building permit.

A lawyer for the Atheneum Group said he had also met with agency representatives last week. Wolf questioned whether he had influenced the writing of the letter.

At McManus' urging, the Council agreed to request Healy to have the Parking Commissioner suspend the permit as long as the legality of the garage remains in question.

Several members of the Council said city officials had not told them about the problem. Traffic and Parking Director George Teso refused to make public statements because of the possibility that he might be named in a lawsuit regarding the garage.

"We can't get the information we need because we keep being told by city officials that they can't answer the question," said Councillor Francis H. Duehay '55, before moving to continue the hearing in executive session. The Council, in a rare step, excluded the public from the remainder of the meeting.