Living Where Some See Only Money

The bulldozers are gunning their engines, ready to level the heart of Central Square as soon as the remaining tenants can be forced out. If the Holmes Trust, which owns the four buildings fronting the Central Square plaza, gets its way, locally-owned businesses serving residents of the surrounding working-class neighborhoods will be replaced by six floors of upscale chain stores and high-priced apartments.

Central Square is in many ways a remnant of an earlier age--a time when people lived in vibrant neighborhoods organized on a human scale. It has been a community for generations of immigrants and working people and a commercial district served by small businesses whose owners lived in the community and were a integral part of it.

Our community has hardly survived unscathed. One need only look across Massachusetts Avenue at the hulking 14-story monstrosity that looms over the Square, or down Magazine Street at the 10-story upscale apartment building that is helping transform what was once a stable residential community into a transient housing market. We who live and work in Central Square look at these "developments" and say "Never again!" But there are those who cannot see communities and people and human needs, those who can see only money. And they look at our community and they see big profits--millions of dollars of profits to be siphoned off to the suburbs at the cost of our community and our lives.

Central Square residents have been battling Holmes since last spring, when the trust proposed to demolish four buildings that have stood since the turn of the century and replace them with an 11-story monolith. The Cambridge Planning Board will deliberate on Holmes' revised proposal tonight. If they give the go-ahead, the bulldozers would roll in early April.

Many of our friends and neighbors have already been forced out. After 70 years in Central Square, Irving's Shoes has been evicted. Golden Donut, a long-established community meeting-place and affordable eatery, is gone. The A&S Diner, the Ethiopian Restaurant and the Oriental Buffet have been forced out--evicted even before Holmes has any of the permits it needs for its proposed development, apparently because they hope the city will be more willing to allow the destruction of an empty shell than of living stores.

Emily Rose, a women's clothing store that served Central Square for 58 years, is gone. Holmes says it will preserve its sign. Surinam's Clothing, serving Central Square for the last 80 years, has been told to clear out by the end of the month. Anthony's Greek Market--another survivor of ethnic communities the "developers" are determined to bury in rubble--will be leveled. And our own Lucy Parsons Center, an independent radical bookstore and community center which has been at various locations in Central Square for most of our 25 years, faces eviction on April 1.

Then there will be no one left. The dentists and accountants and architects and lawyers will have been cleared out. Twelve stores and restaurants will have been evicted, almost all forced to close their doors for good.

There will be no one left but the greed-heads.

And then, having leveled the heart of Central Square, the Holmes Trust now proposes to build six stories of upscale shops and apartments, renting out the district and generating windfall profits for all concerned. Everyone, that is, except the people who currently live and work in Central Square. The developers have been met with opposition everywhere they have gone to peddle their plans. More than 3,000 residents have signed petitions opposing the project, and hundreds of people have packed every city organization meeting considering the special permissions the project needs because it violates planning and zoning board requirements.

The community has united behind three simple demands: No Demolition, No Special Permits and Preservation of Affordability. The Holmes Trust has consistently refused to negotiate with representatives of our community, preferring to meet behind closed doors with city bureaucrats. Indeed, wherever possible they have circumvented the public review process by submitting key materials at the last minute, often after the period for public comment has expired. Indeed, the revised proposal the planning board is set to consider this evening was submitted only last week, long after public hearings were concluded.

We are determined to preserve our neighborhood as an open, accessible, affordable, diverse, familiar, people-friendly community. Any new developments must protect the physical and social environment of Central Square and preserve its cultural and economic diversity. Our community has the right to determine its own future democratically. We will not stand by as the Holmes Trust sets out to rip the heart out of Central Square.

Jon Bekken lives in Central Square, is on the Board of Directors of the Central Square Neighborhood Coalition and is a member of the steering committee at the Lucy Parsons Center.