Greenline extension project faces massive delays

By Stephanie Butler

CAMBRIDGE – The train pulls into Lechmere, the last stop of the MBTA Green Line, and a large group of passengers heads through a small tunnel to the other side of the station and begin to make their way to the Cambridgeside Galleria. Starting in 2014, these passengers will have a little farther to walk to get to the mall.

While the station has been the last stop of the E branch of the Green Line since 1922, developers broke ground for a new station in October 2006.

Some residents think the station is long overdue for improvements. Blogger Jon Petitt said it looks like a "crappy amusement park ride entrance."

Some were less than enthused about the move, especially East Cambridge residents, who will have to cross the Monsignor O’Brien highway to get to the station.

However, the construction of the $70 million new station, which will be called Lechmere at NorthPoint, has been plagued with problems since the beginning.

The city had extended a special deal to NorthPoint, a real estate developer, to build the station at the new site in exchange for giving the corporation the old property.

The company had planned to build condominiums at the old site.

Ongoing litigation is causing massive delays for the station which was slated to open in 2014 (pushed back from the original date of 2010), and the city is anxious to correct the problem. City Councilor Tim Toomey expressed his exasperation at the October 6 City Council meeting.

He requested the City Manager Robert Healy examine whether the city could rescind the special permit issued to NorthPoint "for not complying with mitigation efforts."

The NorthPoint development is jointly owned by two corporations, Cambridge NorthPoint LLC and Boston and Maine Corporation, and last year the two companies sued each other over the project. In July, a judge ordered them both to sell their interests in the project.

To prevent further delays, the state’s Executive Office of Transportation agreed in late August to take over construction.

“We are committed to ensuring the timely completion of this project and to holding the developers to all the commitments they have made,” spokesman Adam Hurtubise said.