Pull Quote from Tour with Kishore:  “You can actually begin to see the mounds of the park be visible as an invitation. And one of the unique things is that because public open space is such an integral part of the plan, Anywhere you enter Cambridge Crossing, any street, you're encountered with a nice public open space.

That's very nice as part of this development.”

BRIAN MAUGHAN:  This is BUILT, the podcast where you’ll meet creative leaders in the commercial real estate industry and hear how they make a difference.

I’m your host Brian Maughan, Chief Innovation and Marketing Officer with Fidelity National Financial. In our Sixth season of BUILT, we’re taking a closer look at where commercial real estate protects, enhances, and even interacts with nature.

This episode we are headed to Cambridge, Massachusetts to hear how one design team spent 22 years on a project – keeping nature as the focus – even as the site itself had three different developers during that time.

Kishore: Hi. My name is Kishore Varanasi. I'm a senior principal at CBT. We're a Boston based, design firm doing architecture, urban design and interior design projects across the globe.

Brian: Fantastic. Great to have you here. Kishore. I'm excited to talk with you today, wanted to see if you could just give me a little bit about your background. Your experience in urban design, urban planning? Give me a little bit about that origin story for you.

Kishore: Yeah, so I grew up in India in a very small town, by the coast. And, growing up in many parts of India back in the day, you're always in connection with nature and you're built environment both at the same time.

There was no air conditioning. There are no systems infrastructure. Everything that we brought into the house. Whether it's the vegetables, fruit, everything stayed. Every part of that stayed in the house. that was foundational to my thinking about living on the planet. And also having a great human experience that is in connection with nature.

That led me to study architecture as an undergraduate in India in a school in Hyderabad. I worked for a couple of years in India. And then I came here for graduate school in 1998. I went to M.I.T. and studied urban design, which is quite provocative in the way M.I.T. thought about, the profession of urban design and thinking about cities, that was quite instrumental in the way, I focused on my practice, going forward, which was to think about design, not purely as a design, but a result of a whole host of factors that shape our cities, from the environment to the human experience to the economics.

So I brought all of that to the profession and I have worked here at CBT. In many capacities for over 24 years at this point, working on a range of large scale urban projects, both here in Boston, nationally and globally.

Brian: Wow. So let's pretend I'm a first year student, you're my professor, and you're going to describe for me, urban design. How would you encapsulate what that is and why I should care as a young student?

Kishore: I am trained as an architect. My undergraduate degree and also have a masters of architecture degree as well and then there is the profession of planning, which, broadly focused on the public side of planning overall.

So both have looked at cities in different ways ,architects have looked at Large scale architecture project, which is very heavily driven by buildings and build environment and planning has looked at it more holistically about human experience, people's concerns, infrastructure, transportation, and public policy. Urban design became a profession, that sat in between the two to try to bring the best of both, and think about cities and places, both from the lens of all the layers that planners look at, but also bringing them and making them spatial at the end of the day, because ultimately both humans and nature experience the space, and it's a special experience that we all have.

So how do you deliver that while looking at the variables that influence that sort of building of cities in a much more holistic fashion than just One aesthetic experience or just one transportation or infrastructure experience.

Brian: So, that crossroads is where we find ourselves as we start to consider Cambridge Crossing, right? Because it's not just a Multifamily or an office building or green space. It's all of those things.

Kishore: Yeah, that's an excellent depiction of Cambridge Crossing

Brian Narration: And it looked very different in the past. It had a train stop called North Point.

Kishore: So this was a former railroad yard. Prior to that it was an industrial land. Prior to that it was the estuary of Miller's River. So like much of Boston, a lot of the areas in Boston have been a landfill. These were low lying marshes or tidelands. became industrial waterfronts down the line, through landfill, which we call them as tidelands, and when the industry moved on, they became abandoned, left open for other uses.

Brian Narration: If you know the area, you probably think of Cambridge being separated from Boston by the Charles River. And you’d be mostly correct, except there’s also a part of Boston just north of the Charles.

Kishore: The majority of the site, about 85 percent of it, is in the city of Cambridge. But there are small parts that are in city of Somerville and city of Boston as well. So the unique thing about the site is its actually in three municipalities. If you would ask, back in 2000, 2001, do you know where North Point is? Nobody would be able to tell.

Kishore: Nobody knew this site existed, because it was simply, out of sight, out of mind, not a part of the city. And, the city of Cambridge, in its own wisdom, even back, 24 years ago, recognized that they needed housing  as they're growing as a city and they looked at this site and there is a lot of capacity here.

Let's try to rezone this site to allow for a lot of housing on this site and see what happens. They were doing planning. In a neighborhood next door called East Cambridge and the planners looked at it and said, why don't we just include this as well?

And we'll see what happens. It was just simply that and they rezoned and then one of our clients at that time, ended up partnering with the landowner to pursue the redevelopment of the site following the rezoning.

Brian Narration: CBT architects went to look at the site, and they had two things in mind.

Kishore One is how can we make sure that this becomes a model for people?

But secondarily, for our clients who are wanting to develop this site. How do we turn the perception of this site into something that is very attractive? So again, nature became another way of actually transforming this brownfield site into something special.

So putting those two together, we started to think about the framework of the project in a much different way than projects that are occurring at that time.

Brian: What you've described is very contemporary right now. It makes sense in 2024, but in 2001,that was very unconventional at the time to be thinking about how do I merge these cities? Not only three cities, but these cities, this idea of nature, let's amplify that  as part of this project. I'm curious, was it you, was it the client? How did that become such an important part of this other than just looking for a creative way to solve a problem

Kishore: We had a great group of collaborators on the team that worked with us and all of us collectively thought about this. We worked with Ken Greenberg, who is a renowned urban designer from Toronto. Michael Van Valkenburgh and Associates were the landscape architects and we had a number of really creative engineers.

The city actually in its rezoning asked for a two and a half acre park. That was the requirement. It was 60% housing and 40% commercial uses. So there were three aspects that the project thought about, nature as a way of improving the urban life.So that was important.

And second was housing. And third was innovation. Cambridge is probably one of the most innovative places on the planet, right next to some other great institutions. We have a place called Kendall Square, which is five minutes from the site, where most of the great innovation, whether it's technology based or pharmaceutical based, happens there.

We said we needed to bring all of this together into creating a robust public space. So we went from a site a requirement that was two and a half acres open space to creating ten acres of park open space. And subsequently, through multiple iterations, it actually went up to eleven acres.

Brian Narration: Our field producer Ari Daniel went on a tour of Cambridge Crossing with Kishore. He heard how the spirit of innovation was integrated into the development, even in the choices of the stones that help accent the site and are angled around the pond.

“Now, there is another interesting story here,  which is about all these stones you're seeing throughout the park, the granite stones.You see the granite everywhere.

 As the construction was happening, the developers and the construction company found a seawall underneath the site,  which is made of beautiful granite.  And a quick decision was made by the developers and the landscape architects to really retrieve all of the granite And not let any one of it leave the site  and repurpose them as a part of the landscape.

So that was a huge move by the team to ensure that we keep the material, which is inherently sustainable material that you found on the site. So we did not bring material from the outside where we can use the stone throughout the project. It became this sort of the language of the site that is reminiscent of its history.

But also it's contemporary utilization in a very different way. So it became a powerful message, as a part of the design of the open spaces throughout the project.”

Brian Narration: Kishore mentioned that Cambridge Crossing consists of 60% housing and 40% commercial. Here’s what that looks like. 

Kishore: The site of Cambridge Crossing is around 45 acres overall. Mix of housing and commercial. We have around 26 to 2800 units and about 2. 5 million square feet of commercial space that has largely become life sciences lab spaces because Cambridge has become the center for innovation around life sciences.

And, we have about 80 to 100, 000 square feet of retail. 11 acres is public open space. There's a large central park, which is around 5 & 1/2 acres. And rest of the open space is, either in the form of boulevards or green fingers that bring the open space system to deeper into the neighborhood around it.

And each of the public spaces serve different functions that represent the kinds of things that the neighborhood, the community, and the people who live and work here would want to do. The central feature is what we call the central common, which is a great story around stormwater management.

Again, ahead of its times as we think about, climate resilience and sea level rise. The biggest problem especially as you're experiencing now with all the hurricanes that are happening in the south, there are two things happening simultaneously. the seas are surging during the storm surge.

But at the same time, waters are coming down from the sky because of the storms. So it's not only enough to protect the neighborhoods from the rising seas and the storm surge, but you have to simultaneously manage the water that is falling onto the site. So that was, a great idea that we collectively liked and sold our clients around was that we could actually manage all of the stormwater back in the day in the park which is a sustainable thing to do.

Brian: If I understand you correctly, that five acre central green space is also then the method of managing that stormwater. You're bringing the water there. You're allowing nature to do its work and that helps you manage this influx of water. That's naturally just happening more and more. So it serves both purposes. Is that accurate?

Kishore: Right. So,all of the water from the buildings and the surrounding streets is collected through the public spaces, and it's all brought into the Central Common. And we have a really beautiful pond in the middle of Central Common that goes up and down based on the storm. And all of the water is retained in that pond.

Kishore: Some of it is used for irrigation of the park. So we're not bringing fresh water from the outside and some of it is slowly released into the city system. when the storm is over. So we're not inundating the city's storm infrastructure. So it serves both the purposes and to our delight, there are all kinds of habitat in the pond.

There is fish, there are ducks,there are painted turtles and on the park itself has a huge amount of greenery. So the community and the way they engage with the pond and the nature is quite exciting to see when you're around the site

“Beyond this, you see the railroad tracks, you see the I-93 and you see the tracks there.We're about a couple of feet above the tracks. When we first started, the site was at the level of the tracks.

The entire site has been elevated  to be above the future coastal flooding elevation. Because much of Boston is along the coast and it's subject to sea level rise. So we also ensured that the site is elevated and the ground floors of the buildings are elevated to make sure that they're resilient from future coastal flooding. While simultaneously managing the stormwater that is coming from the top.”

Brian Narration: Thinking long-term is important for many reasons. You probably have heard of the Big Dig, Boston’s megaproject to move I-93 underground; that project was still under construction when the planning of Cambridge Crossing got started.

Kishore: It was a total mess and believing that we would go from there to something else was the first part of it. Whatever we do here, this nature has to become a part of the larger natural system that will occur maybe 5, 10, 20 years. We said, let's do something that goes beyond the site, not just inward looking.

Kishore: So we not only quadruple the open space, but we also created it to go along the length of the project. The site is really skinny but long. It's about half a mile long. So we created the open space system to run from one end to the other.

We can actually make this site a part of a larger regional system, whether it's the regional ecology or transportation movement or site becoming a part of the vocabulary of the region. Not just for the people who live here, whether people who are commuting back and forth on bikes, strollers, wheelchairs, buses, but also the, The East Cambridge neighborhoods that was right next door.

So we made both an effort to create the space that along its length and really tame the highway that was actually one of the main highways that was disconnecting the site with the neighborhood to create a series of crossings to bring neighborhood into the site.

And, why did the developers like this? We made sure that the open space touched every building. So now if you take a site like this and if you cleared an open space system and every building is on. Some kind of a park. The value of that is likely to go up. We were able to convince the developers that this is a good thing to do from a real estate value perspective.

Kishore: And at the same time, this is where our practice model comes in. We didn't compromise a single square foot of what they were allowed to build.

Brian: I love Boston as a city and the surrounding areas, Cambridge, et cetera. There's a lot of energy there. There's a lot of big ideas that come out of that area.

Was it always? This thought that yes, we're going to develop this land and we're going to build a model for future was that always the intention? By the way, it touches three, municipalities. So it's going to be a little bit cumbersome. We're going to have to work through that, but Oh, by the way, we're also going to increase this green space. So it touches every building. Oh, but that's not it.

We're also going to become a model for how we can do this in the future. And we're 20 years ahead of our time. I'm just fascinated by that vision.

Kishore: One of the things we looked at, like we do in most projects is,how this place came to being before this site is being developed. So the idea of the Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and the surrounding neighborhoods is a fascinating one.

If you draw a five mile radius from the center of Boston. It is a very compact city. But not only that, the amount of wonderful things that happen in those five mile radius is unparalleled.

We have some of the best institutions in the world. We have some of the best neighborhoods. We have great healthcare, everybody from the world come to Boston to seek healthcare. We have one of the oldest transportation systems and we have become one of these platforms for innovation.

Kishore: When we look back, what we saw was the city consistently played with this area to be the city  it is today.The city of Boston was probably a third. Much of it was a landfill. It was all marshes and waters.

So all the great neighborhoods, all the good institutions, all the transportation infrastructure was all built by carefully looking at what I call every inch of the city. Thinking both about the big picture and also not compromising every inch and out of that also came one of the best park systems.

So it was natural when we started to look at this site, all of those became an inspiration where we would look at, how do we bring it to more of a contemporary society where green spaces become both a release from the stresses of the city, great places for recreation and recharge, but also they become spaces for transportation and mobility as a system and you build great neighborhoods around it.

“So this bike trail system would go through Cambridge Crossing and then link into the  new multi use path through Somerville and then to Minuteman Trail, which will take you to Lexington, Bedford and Concord. So this is a continuous bikeway and some of our colleagues actually, they now bike to work very comfortably from Arlington, Somerville and other places through this system, which is great.”

Brian Narration: Cambridge Crossing is a new neighborhood in a way, and well a new neighborhood needs retail. 

Kishore: Normally, when you think about retail, you want to construct the main street and have buildings on either side with ground floor retail.

We once again felt that Cambridge Crossing is all about nature. This large public move that we made and the retail has to intersect with that and become a part of the nature that became the concept. So what we did was we inserted a series of pavilions in the public space that you can pass through from the central common through the retail spaces to a very cool amphitheater within the park and the rest of the bike trail connection.

And some of these buildings, particularly one building, we call it the shed, was inspired by the transportation history of the site being a railroad yard. So the park actually passes through the shed. But either side are also retail establishments that spill out into the park and the shed itself gives you protection so you can use the space in all seasons, but also the establishments that are set up in the shed also serve in the park.

There is a picnic row, for example, next to the pond. So we created this infrastructure and the mechanism with the retail  to also be a part of the park, with the point that I can go there with my kids. While they're playing in the park or they are near the pond, I can still have a glass of wine sitting next to it or a cup of coffee or having lunch.

“Now we're standing right underneath the shed looking back towards the length of the park. So you see these incredibly large granite blocks arranged organically, but as a series of steps leading into the pond. So we see people, kids going all the way down, touching the water playing in the water. And you also see a sloped area where we find often kids coming down and engaging with the water.”

Brian Narration: Cambridge Crossing emphasizes connectivity as an essential aspect for success. It achieved WiredScore Certification; which means the underlying infrastructure can adapt to technology changes over time and that they offer free WiFi in the public spaces.

Kishore: The district is trying to be innovative at multiple scales. And in order to attract the tenants, we need to make sure that the buildings have the best systems in place.

They're also sustainable in the first place and in the vertical dimension, but also they're bringing the best of the technology to make sure that these companies can do what they need to do on a daily basis. So a lot of innovations around that were made, at the building level to make them competitive to the marketplace by the developers.

Brian Narration: Kishore and the rest of the team found another way to express their innovation as well as honor their community..

Kishore: Much of the rezoning process was led by city of Cambridge having owned a majority of the site. We have a number of new streets that are built that are part of the urban system on the site.

There was a conscious effort to really bring some kind of a meaning for the larger community. To this site the idea is to make sure that this doesn't become an enclave. It becomes a part of the rest of the city.

So naming of the streets is yet another way of creating meaning for the larger community so In collaboration with City of Cambridge, all of the streets are named after some of the most powerful women of City of Cambridge, whether it's Maria Baldwin or Julia Child, you name it. It was quite a thoughtful thing that the city as well as the developers did

Brian: I love it. I love it.

“So now we're walking away from the Central Common in the opposite direction. We're walking underneath the shed And  you can see that there is another green space on the other end, but now we're connected with a retail promenade, one underneath the shed and we cross the first street.

And then there's another retail promenade and leading up to this really beautiful mounded amphitheater that is looking back at us.  So this is the idea of connecting the open spaces by inserting retail.  Graciously into it, but it becomes a part of the experience of the park. And you see we have a coffee shop here. And within the shed also , you see the exhibit, Her Story, which is inspiration for Cambridge Crossing to name all of the streets after the trailblazing women of Cambridge.”

Kishore: The other space that I truly like, which has come a really long way, is a vertical connection from the site to Gilmore bridge which is one of the edges of the site.

So when we did the planning, back in 2001 and 2002, we had two transit stations. One of them is at the doorsteps, which is the green line. There's another one, on top of this bridge, if you cross the remaining railroads into Charlestown. There's an Orange Line train station, which is also a very important transit connection.

So one of the requirements of the city was to make sure that we create a generous connection to go to that station as well. So over the years, we toyed with many different ideas how to make this connection really interesting and exciting but today, it evolved into something that is beyond anybody's imagination.

It is a really cool stairway, but it also feels like you're climbing a little mountain with the way that we've created the landscape and we brought the nature even into that vertical connection through a series of mounds. If you're standing on top of the bridge, how it engages with the building, you can either take a stair or you can immediately get into an elevator if you're in a wheelchair or a stroller.

But also have this beautiful panoramic view of the site. It's quite an exciting place to be. It has become something beyond what I thought would be in my earlier imaginations.

“And you see, how the landscape around us, instead of designing this as an infrastructural connection with a hard stair, you're really climbing a mini hill with a rolling natural landscape on either side of you, which is quite a beautiful thing.

And then you look back at the site from this vantage point, which is quite nice, and you won't believe that there's a major  road connection with a lot of traffic going through it. You don't feel you're actually next to it.”

Brian Narration:. They still have about a third of the space to continue to build and develop. But they're still focused on leaving space for innovation and the ability to pivot with the market's needs.

Kishore: The remaining third, we expect it to be interesting and something different than what we know at this point to bring to the table.

We also wanted each building to have its own design freedom within a set of rules. So if you go to the site and look at the buildings, they don't look alike. We let the individual buildings bring the best of times within some rules of urban street life and how they engage with the public realm and the streets, how they're scaled, but be very different giving the time of when the building is being built, the designer of the building and the developer of that time to think creatively for its time.

So that created a unique variety of buildings around the site, but none of them compromised the quality of the space because the public realm had its own robust character and scale to it.

Brian Narration: Cambridge Crossing’s unique blend of city life and nature has matured over time and it was crafted to age gracefully.

Kishore: One of the successes behind this project is that our team was able to stay on it for 22 years at this point which normally doesn't happen.

When you do that, you can actually allow for this flexibility to happen in a careful way. But if you don't steward it properly, you can also end up with a place that can lose its character. So, as design practices go, I think there should be a strong commitment from designers to see large projects like this as not one or two year, exercise, but something to commit to make sure we're actually delivering a full community because when you're designing a building, it's a two or three year thing.You see it through. It's done.

But having that patience and interest to ensure the fact that This is gonna change in five years, 10 years, and you should be okay with it. And you should make sure that evolution happened. So this is the methodology we brought to a lot of projects,in this country and around the world.

I just wanted to make sure that tenacity and stewardship is very important to make sure places become successful in the long run.

Brian: I think one thing that I'm learning is that if we take the time to look forward and think through how we're leveraging space, how we're integrating and amplifying nature. If we do that well, it allows us actually to have more flexibility as things evolve.

We don't want this to be seen as something that was developed then. We want it to be something that is evolving now and whatever tomorrow is going to bring as well. And I think that interplay is evident in what you've described.

Kishore, I really appreciate you spending time with us.

Kishore: Great. Thank you. This has been a great conversation.

Brian Narration: Thanks for tuning into Season Six of Built! We had a phenomenal time this season highlighting how nature and commercial real estate can thrive together.

Brian Narration:  If you haven't had the chance to catch our previous episodes, now's the perfect time to dive in! You can find all episodes of Built wherever you listen to podcasts. If you enjoy the show, we’d love for you to share it with your friends and leave us a rating on your podcast app!

Built is a co-production of Fidelity National Financial and PRX Productions. From FNF, our project is run by Annie Bardelas. This episode of Built was produced by Emmanuel Desarme. Our Senior Producer and editor is Genevieve Sponsler. Audio mastering by Rebecca Seidel.

The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales.

Special thanks to Kishore Varanasi from CBT Architects. Also thanks to Ari Daniel for audio support.

I’m Brian Maughan.

And remember, every story is unique, every property is individual, but we’re all part of this BUILT world