Construction Maison

Some graduate students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology are pushing the university to build more on-campus housing, and using MIT’s plans to build in the heart of red- hot Kendall Square as leverage. A group of grad students and Cambridge residents Monday filed a proposal with the city that would prevent MIT from developing the 14-acre site of the Volpe Transportation Center — which MIT is buying from the federal government for $750 million — until it adds up to 1,800 more dorm beds for graduate students. Advertisement The zoning petition would need approval from the Cambridge City Council , and its proponents framed it more as “the beginning of a conversation” than an outright demand. And it comes as MIT officials pledge another review of graduate student housing . It’s the latest round in a long debate over how MIT, and other Boston-area schools, should house their growing student bodies in an increasingly crowded city .Officials in Boston have been pushing colleges a...

By John Hawkinson Thursday, August 17, 2017 A nighttime view of the Zinc luxury apartments from a nearby resident‘s balcony in 2016. (Photo: Marie Saccoccio) The rooftop uplighting at the Zinc luxury apartment building must stay off, Judge Michael D. Vhay has decided in a decision dated Monday . East Cambridge residents and neighbors to the Zinc building at 22 Water St. in NorthPoint complained to the city in 2016 when Zinc added three wide stripes of changing color LEDs across the roofline of the 15-story, 392- apartment building near Charlestown and Somerville; the city ordered Zinc to turn off the lights, and Zinc finally sued the city in the Land Court in October. Oral argument was held Aug. 9  at the Land Court in Boston. Sarah Turano-Flores, an attorney for Zinc, argues in Land Court. (Photo: John Hawkinson ) Sarah Turano-Flores, an attorney for Zinc, argued to the court that even though the final development plan filed by the original developers explicitly barred the us...