“The train comes to NorthPoint”
Ground is being broken on the second phase of a massive project that includes a $70 million Green Line station to replace the Lechmere stop.
An artist’s drawing of the new glass-and-steel NorthPoint at Lechmere Green Line stop.
Quotes from the article…
The NorthPoint construction project, under way in East Cambridge, is less a new development than a new small town: 5.2 million square feet of buildings on 45 acres, 2,500 new residences, 20 buildings on 19 blocks, a 10-acre central park, and retail space with no telling how many Starbucks cafes.
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Development manager Jones Lang LaSalle, a global real estate firm based in Boston that now includes the former Spaulding & Slye, is building a sleek new $70 million MBTA station on NorthPoint property.
When it opens in 2010, it will replace the Lechmere T station, operating on the Green Line across Monsignor O’Brien Highway, an outdated facility whose name is a legacy of a neighborhood and a retail store that no longer exists.
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Placing the NorthPoint community adjacent to an MBTA station is consistent with the trend toward “transit-oriented development” — which aims to reduce people’s commuting times, combat high gasoline prices, and avoid more sprawl.
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One major advantage of the relocated MBTA station is it will allow the authority in the future to extend the Green Line to Union Square in Somerville and Medford. The station is being designed by Parsons Brinckerhoff’s private division and Handel Architects LLP of New York. Handel was the architect for Millennium Place in Boston.