Cambridge Planning Board Punts on Proposal to End Single-Family Housing in Final Vote

After hours of back-and-forth, the Cambridge Planning Board voted on Tuesday not to take a stance on a hotly contested proposal to allow six-story apartment buildings across the city, instead passing a general statement of support for multifamily housing to the Cambridge City Council.

The Planning Board’s decision falls in line with widespread calls from some Cambridge residents — who said they lacked clarity on the proposal’s impacts — to refile the proposal. If passed, the plan would eliminate single-family zoning citywide.

During the Tuesday meeting, Planning Board Chair Mary T. Flynn said the Board’s recommendation should not be considered positive or negative for the time being.

“It would be supportive of the goals, but with many questions, issues, et cetera, around the specifics,” Flynn said.

The Planning Board’s official communication to the City Council comes after weeks of debating and delaying their finalized recommendations. The group determined that concerns, including over how developers will use the new zoning regulations to change the urban fabric of the city, have not been addressed sufficiently to endorse the proposal with full confidence.

While the board members briefly discussed the possibility of giving a qualified but approving recommendation to the zoning proposal with amendments to address potential environment and density concerns, they concluded that even determining the necessary amendments would be too difficult.

“​​I certainly, on the face of it, don’t agree with the details,” Associate Planning Board Member Daniel P. Anderson said. “I’m not getting a sense that anybody on the board is fully on board with those details.”

All board members agreed that multifamily housing should be offered throughout the city. But there was too much disagreement within the group on the proposal’s details — such as the number of stories it should allow — for members to settle on a statement of support, even for an amended version.

“There’s a variance of opinion, both among ourselves and people in the city in general,” Flynn said.

Board member H. Theodore Cohen also said if amendments are added, they should be determined by elected officials instead of the Planning Board, which is a volunteer body.

“Given as you’ve already observed — the scale of the interest, and frankly, just inspiring amount of work neighbors and fellow citizens have put into this — this decision and these details rightfully belong in a political forum and not in our advisory forum,” Cohen said.

“We’re not elected, and the thoughtful neighbors need their elected officials to summarize the mood of their constituents and make decisions and inform the zoning from there,” he added. “That’s really beyond our purview.”

The City Council has until Feb. 17 to take the Planning Board’s recommendation into account and come to a final vote on the proposal.

—Staff writer Grace E. Yoon can be reached at grace.yoon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @graceunkyoon.