By Arezoo Ghazagh and Tehle E. Ross • 10/02/25

Prime real estate right here By Mirika J. Jambudi

When one door closes, another door opens. With the Harvard Square Starbucks closing its doors last Saturday, we’re left with a prime piece of real estate and one looming question: what should take its place? Spoiler alert: not another bank.

1. Literally any chain fast food restaurant

Because why do we have to spend an extra $15 for someone to drive us a McChicken when it can be in walking distance!

2. Another Eliot overflow dorm

I wouldn’t doubt it. They’ll really put us anywhere.

3. A rage room

It’s midterm season. Already. Let it out here instead of by sending an emotional email to your TF.

4. An urgent care

So you don’t have to wait one trillion years for HUHS to actually have availability.

5. An REI co-op

For the freshmen who still dream of their FOP days, and for those whose parents forced them to pick Harvard over Dartmouth (looking at you, HOC-ers). And also for those who just want a new water bottle.

6. A laundromat

Because we are all tired of paying for three dryer cycles (with increased pricing, may I remind you) and having our clothes STILL be wet.

7. An Apple Store

So you don’t have to buy a new (off-brand) charger from CVS for $30.

8. The Curious George shop (again)

Because why did this ever leave in the first place. Sad.

9. Another burrito place

Because the four other options weren’t enough.

10. Another boba place

Again, the Harvard Square Business Association obviously doesn’t think we have enough of these either.

11. Another Harvard Shop

Yet again, I don’t think that we have nearly enough of these within walking distance of each other yet.

12. Tasty Basty

Like Tasty Burger, but just the basement. Apparently, people don’t know what this is anymore? Bring back Harvard’s best party venue!

13. A drone performing arts studio

Because Harvard somehow managed to orchestrate an entire drone half-time show while everything else on campus suffered from budget cuts?

14. A scooter store

I am genuinely confused by the scooters here. Where are people athletes buying them? Are they shipped to the mail center? A scooter store makes way more sense than whatever the answers are to those questions.

15. A second Berryline location

The Berryline line is simply too long now that it has gone viral on TikTok. It’s time to expand!

16. A Kirkland House Grille

It really doesn’t sit right with me that Kirkland doesn’t have a grille. They seem like they would. So let’s make it a reality.

17. Another Flyby grab-and-go lunch station

So you can actually make it to class on time with your grab-and-go mozzarella caprese sandwich instead of being late and waiting 15 minutes for it!

No matter what moves in, it’ll be divisive… but at least Harvard students will have something new to complain about!

The Cambridge City Council outlined steps Monday to potentially transform the tunnel into an underground venue.

By Madison LucchesiSeptember 30, 2025 | 3:28 PM
3 minutes to read

A long-abandoned Harvard Square tunnel could become an entertainment venue within the next decade. 

The Cambridge City Council filed a memo to continue discussing repurposing the tunnel into an underground music venue on Monday. The city began seriously discussing the potential venue earlier this year and is now taking steps to make headway towards a feasibility study and eventually, construction. 

In a statement to the council, Cambridge City Manager Yi-An Huang said, “It is clear that Harvard Square, like all of our business districts, must continue to adapt and evolve in response to shifting economic conditions and regional competition.”

Huang said this project would have to be done in very close collaboration with the MBTA since the transit authority owns the space, which borders the underground city-owned Harvard Square Hotel parking lot, the council said. 

“At this time, I remain open to continuing the conversation with the HSBA and other stakeholders,” Huang added. “However, I believe it is prudent to await further engagement from MassDOT and the MBTA before proceeding with any formal next steps. Their input will be essential in assessing the feasibility, regulatory considerations, … long-term implications of this proposal, and … identifying a viable funding source for the feasibility phase will also be a critical step in determining the path forward.”

In a statement to the council, John DiGiovanni, president of Trinity Property Management and owner of several Harvard Square properties, noted “It has been several years since we began engaging in the City Manager’s office on this matter. … It is not the time to await further engagement from the state. It is time for the city to lead.”

If the MBTA and the Harvard Square Business Association are on board, the council will then vote on allocating $72,000 of the $300,000 already allocated for this project to create a request for proposal that will address any lasting questions regarding the tunnel’s conversion into a venue, according to the council.

“Unless the owners are willing to move forward, … we should not commit any funds whatsoever until we have assurance,” City Councilor Patty Nolan said.

If the conversations go well and the request for proposal is written, the Cambridge City Council would then vote on committing $500,000 to $1 million to conduct a feasibility study. While a private company or entertainment venue could foot the bill for the study, that would not guarantee them the space as that will go to the highest bidder, Huang said.

“Then, you would need to fund the full package of improvements, which are quite significant when you think about what it would take to make that space accessible, safe, … and meet code,” Deputy City Manager Katherine Watkins said.

The entire process will take several years.

“I think even the most excited proponents really believe that at the most aggressive timeline we are not going to see a tunnel come online for five, probably closer to 10 years,” Huang said.

Since the venue’s construction will take a while, if it happens at all, Huang and members of the council recommended implementing shorter-term methods to revitalize Cambridge’s commercial districts in the meantime. Councilor Nolan suggested focusing on the pedestrianization of Harvard Square. 

By Madison Lucchesi Boston.com,Updated September 18, 2025, 7:00 a.m.

The Cambridge City Council passed a motion to close a block in Harvard Square traffic to allow for outdoor dining spaces on Monday.

Blue Bottle Coffee, Daedalus Restaurant and Sea Hag Restaurant & Bar will have back patio spaces on Lower Bow Street beginning in the spring, according to Cambridge Day.

Between Dewolfe Street and Plympton Street, Lower Bow Street has been closed due to construction for two years “without causing significant impacts on the safety or functionality of the surrounding traffic patterns,” Cambridge Transportation Commissioner Brooke McKenna wrote in a statement to the city manager.

McKenna continued, “This has demonstrated that from a traffic perspective, this location is an excellent opportunity for pedestrianization. In addition, during COVID, the adjacent restaurants, with front doors on Mt. Auburn Street, had robust outdoor dining on Bow Street with great success.”

The type of blockage that will be used to close the street to car traffic has not been determined.

City Councilor Patty Nolan began pushing for automatic bollards that can be lowered with a code, allowing delivery drivers to pass through, in 2020.

“The city continues to have serious reservations about the reliability, maintenance burdens, installation challenges, and cost of automatic bollards,” McKenna wrote in her Sept. 11 statement.

On Monday, Nolan said Bow Street “seems to be an ideal way to try [automatic bollards] because it’s such a small, very specific street.”

In response, Deputy City Manager Kathy Watkins said, “It is just a significant maintenance issue that we feel like there are better solutions that don’t require that level of maintenance and that level of complexity.” She also noted that most of the city’s removable bollards are not reinstalled.

Nolan asked the city managers to consult other cities that use the automatic bollards, noting the bollards are popular in Europe, because she believes they could be a cost saving method in the long term, she said.

“I’m looking forward to all of us being able to go out and sit on Bow Street,” Nolan added.

McKenna said the city will continue to collaborate with the Harvard Square Business Association, Harvard University, and the impacted businesses regarding the pedestrianization of the block.

“All the people who operate businesses there are in favor of” pedestrianization to create outdoor patio spaces, Nolan said.

Bailey Allen USA TODAY NETWORK – New England

Officials in Cambridge are working on a plan to permanently block off a street in Harvard Square to car traffic, allowing pedestrians to use it instead.

The pedestrianization of Lower Bow Street would start next spring, coinciding with the beginning of the 2026 outdoor dining season, according to a Sept. 11 letter from Transportation Commissioner Brooke McKenna to city councilors.

The street has already been closed for construction for years, without causing significant impacts, McKenna said in the letter. The construction projects have ranged from building renovations to road repaving, according to city spokesperson Jeremy Warnick.

“This has demonstrated that from a traffic perspective, this location is an excellent opportunity for pedestrianization,” she said.

McKenna said the permanent closure of Bow Street could benefit local businesses, with opportunities for outdoor dining.

The plan was discussed by the Cambridge City Council on Sept. 15 and set in motion.

Where exactly would the road be closed?

Lower Bow Street would be closed permanently between Dewolfe and Plympton streets, according to McKenna.

The road has already been closed temporarily, and the area was utilized during the COVID-19 pandemic for outdoor dining, she said.

Officials deciding what materials to block roadway with

McKenna said in her letter that city officials had not yet determined what materials to use to block the roadway, but would consult with stakeholders, including Harvard University and the Harvard Square Business Association.

However, the City of Cambridge has “serious reservations about the reliability, maintenance burdens, installation challenges, and costs of automatic bollards,” she said.

The city plans to pursue its options, and the council voted unanimously to place the discussion “on file.”

Beth McDermott
Reporter assisted by AI

Revels RiverSing, a beloved family-friendly fall tradition, is returning to Harvard Square on Saturday, Sept. 20.

The annual sing-along celebration of the autumnal equinox kicks off at Winthrop Park and on the banks of the Charles River by the John W. Weeks Memorial Bridge, according to a community announcement.

The event, hosted by Revels Artist-in-Residence David Coffin and Revels Music Director Elijah Botkin, will feature music, puppetry, dance and a puppet parade. The parade, which begins at Winthrop Park, will feature puppets provided by The Puppeteers Cooperative and music from Good Trouble Brass Band and Wheelwright’s One Man Band.

Visitors waiting on the riverbank for the parade’s arrival will be treated to a Morris dance performance from Muddy River Morris, according to the announcement. Once the parade arrives, audiences will participate in a community singalong led by Coffin, Botkin, the Revels RiverSing Chorus and the Boston City Singers. The event will also feature appearances from the Revels Dragons, dancer Isaura Oliveira as Yorùba river goddess Oshun and vocalist Jireh Calo.Top municipal salaries Who were the top paid Cambridge employees in 2024? We have a list

The celebration will conclude with saxophone virtuoso Stan Strickland sailing down the Charles and greeting the setting sun with music, according to the announcement.

Revels RiverSing began as a partnership with the Charles River Conservancy in 2004. The event is a participatory musical celebration of the change of seasons and the splendor of the Charles River and its parklands, according to the announcement.

The program begins at 5 p.m. in Winthrop Park and at the Weeks Bridge. Admission is free, with a suggested donation of $5. Parking is available in nearby Harvard Square.

Attendees can pre-purchase a picnic meal from Harvard Square’s Grendel’s Den, which will be available for pickup on the day of the event. They’re also welcome to bring blankets and lawn chairs.

In the event of inclement weather, Revels RiverSing will move to Sunday, Sept. 21. Updates will be posted on the Revels website at revels.org.

The event is sponsored by the Harvard Square Business Association, the Cambridge Community Foundation, Houghton Chemical and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Home | Business + Money

Block of Harvard Square road will go traffic-free, but plan to repurpose T tunnel meets resistance

By Marc Levy

Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Marc LevyA block of Bow Street in Harvard Square will close to car traffic in the spring, Cambridge staff say.

One Harvard Square project got a win Monday in Cambridge, while another faced a setback.

In the spring, the Blue Bottle Coffee shop and two restaurants on Mount Auburn Street will have back patios to lounge in on a stretch of road closed permanently to pass-through car traffic, officials said. But a project to reuse an abandoned MBTA tunnel faces resistance in a bid to explore its reuse as an entertainment venue.

A block of Lower Bow Street, between Dewolfe and Plympton streets, was closed for at least two years of construction “without causing significant impacts on the safety or functionality of the surrounding traffic patterns,” transportation commissioner Brooke McKenna said in a memo to city councillors. This shows it to be “an excellent opportunity for pedestrianization.”

That will benefit the Daedalus and Sea Hag restaurants and, proponents say, give Harvard Square an additional stretch of European-feeling luxury.

There was one disagreement between staff and councillor Patty Nolan, who urged the plan in June with a reminder that pedestrianization of parts of the square has been discussed back to 2020: Nolan wants the city to try blocking the street with automated bollards that delivery drivers can lower by punching in a code on a keypad.

Deputy city manager Kathy Watkins thinks they will be too “fussy,” costing more to install and maintain than manual bollards that are taken away and put back by hand as needed.

“Cities all across Europe have been using these in snow, in rain,” Nolan said. “You don’t have to pay people to go back and forth like on Palmer street, where you have to have someone every single day, twice a day, go out” to move bollards. (Watkins also noted that the city’s removable bollards “tend to get removed and not put back.”)

Subway tunnel entertainment venue

While Nolan asked staff for at least an assurance that they were researching the automated bollards, mayor E. Denise Simmons rejected Monday that city staff would shut down a Harvard Square Business Association dream for reuse of an old subway tunnel, unseen by passengers for 40 years, that lurks beneath the pavement from Mount Auburn and Eliot streets to the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government.

The mayor planned to send the report back to city manager Yi-An Huang.

“I’m disappointed that the office seems very unwilling to take even this modest first step to invest in and explore the future of one of our most important commercial districts,” Simmons said. “The Harvard Square Business Association has brought us a creative proposal that deserves more than cautious hesitation at a time when our commercial districts face unprecedented challenges.”

An empty tunnel under Harvard Square could be turned into a venue hosting a variety of events, the Harvard Square Business Association says.

Before the mayor could take that formal step, councillor Burhan Azeem used his “charter right” to bump discussion by one regular meeting – to Sept. 29, because the council is off for next week’s Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah. He sought a “productive” discussion and Monday’s dialogue was “becoming hostile,” Azeem said.

Like the pedestrianization concept, public discussion of the tunnel dates back to 2020. But it’s been eyed by the association for longer, and members even paid for 3D imaging of the space to help craft designs – part of some $50,000 to $60,000 in private money already put toward the idea. The next step was asking the city for $72,000 toward crafting a request for proposals and seeing what firms might want in on development of the idea.

Huang demurred in a memo, though, as “the full cost of the feasibility study that the RFP would seek to fund could require an investment in the range of $500,000 to $1 million, and a viable funding source for this next phase has yet to be identified.”

There were objections from councillors to the call for proposals being shut down – vice mayor Marc McGovern noted that the $72,000 requested was already allocated for study in Harvard Square – and from John DiGiovanni, a developer and former president of the HSBA.

“The RFP process itself will likely take over a year, giving the city and others time to identify additional funding sources,” DiGiovanni said. Meanwhile, “neighboring cities are developing their mixed-use districts … Entertainment is the anchor, and we’re late.”

That the memo arrived Monday was a surprise to Simmons, who had a new order in place calling for Huang to report back Sept. 29 …

Lower Bow Street will be closed to traffic to create outdoor patio space for restaurants.

By Madison LucchesiSeptember 16, 2025 | 4:14 PM
2 minutes to read

The Cambridge City Council passed a motion to close a block in Harvard Square traffic to allow for outdoor dining spaces on Monday.

Blue Bottle Coffee, Daedalus Restaurant and Sea Hag Restaurant & Bar will have back patio spaces on Lower Bow Street beginning in the spring, according to Cambridge Day.

Between Dewolfe Street and Plympton Street, Lower Bow Street has been closed due to construction for two years “without causing significant impacts on the safety or functionality of the surrounding traffic patterns,” Cambridge Transportation Commissioner Brooke McKenna wrote in a statement to the city manager.

McKenna continued, “This has demonstrated that from a traffic perspective, this location is an excellent opportunity for pedestrianization. In addition, during COVID, the adjacent restaurants, with front doors on Mt. Auburn Street, had robust outdoor dining on Bow Street with great success.”

The type of blockage that will be used to close the street to car traffic has not been determined.

City Councilor Patty Nolan began pushing for automatic bollards that can be lowered with a code, allowing delivery drivers to pass through, in 2020.

“The city continues to have serious reservations about the reliability, maintenance burdens, installation challenges, and cost of automatic bollards,” McKenna wrote in her Sept. 11 statement.

On Monday, Nolan said Bow Street “seems to be an ideal way to try [automatic bollards] because it’s such a small, very specific street.”

In response, Deputy City Manager Kathy Watkins said, “It is just a significant maintenance issue that we feel like there are better solutions that don’t require that level of maintenance and that level of complexity.” She also noted that most of the city’s removable bollards are not reinstalled.

Nolan asked the city managers to consult other cities that use the automatic bollards, noting the bollards are popular in Europe, because she believes they could be a cost saving method in the long term, she said.

“I’m looking forward to all of us being able to go out and sit on Bow Street,” Nolan added.

McKenna said the city will continue to collaborate with the Harvard Square Business Association, Harvard University, and the impacted businesses regarding the pedestrianization of the block.

“All the people who operate businesses there are in favor of” pedestrianization to create outdoor patio spaces, Nolan said.

The cafe chain Daily Provisions opened a location in Harvard Square this summer. By E. Matteo Diaz

By Jaya N. Karamcheti and Kevin Zhong, Crimson Staff Writers

Yesterday

Daily Provisions is quickly becoming a daily staple in Harvard Square, attracting students and tourists alike with all-day dining, craft coffee, and study spaces.

The cafe — located at 1 Brattle Square — is a small chain that recently expanded from New York City to New England. The Harvard Square location marked its first in Massachusetts when it opened in July, with another location set to open in Seaport in 2026.

Steven L. Kurland, the New England area director for the chain, says the all-day concept of Daily Provisions sets itself apart from other cafes and restaurants in the Square. Open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., its menu features everything from crullers to sandwiches to a whole roasted chicken.

“We get here at 5:30 a.m. We bake our cookies and bake our croissants and make our crullers, so that’s probably our most directly iconic item. We have a pretty wide variety,” Kurland said.

Daily Provisions’s emphasis on its food has made it a quick standout among customers. Trish A. Zeytoonjian, a local resident, made her second visit to Daily Provisions for the “best Arnold Palmer I’ve had.”

“Consistency in food, good service, nice outdoor space, really pretty aesthetic. Those are all important things,” Zeytoonjian said.

Daily Provisions has ten other locations across the country, ranging from New York City to D.C. But Kurland says Harvard Square stands out for its diversity of businesses and residents — a key resource he hopes to tap into.

“Within half a mile, we’ve got big companies, small companies, residents, students, tourists, and a lot of local great businesses here already,” Kurland said. “So I think that made it a really logical choice.”

Kurland says that unlike other cafes, the spacious layout of Daily Provisions makes it an ideal spot for Harvard students to study.

“We want to build our business in our evenings, but it’s a great time to come in with a study group,” Kurland said.

Kurland hopes Daily Provisions will be more than a cafe, eventually becoming an integral part of the Harvard network. He hopes to partner with local businesses, organizations, and even Harvard sports teams. Daily Provisions has already been working with Project Paulie and Spoonfuls, two local food recovery and pantry organizations.

Daily Provisions has already become a reliable staple for students looking to escape dining hall food and regular Harvard Square haunts. The cafe offered Harvard students free crullers during the first week of school — and students have been coming back ever since.

“Their bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich is, I think, what people really mess with,” Josh P. Mysore ’26 said. “That’s currently what I got.”

“I just was like, ‘I need a sandwich and I don’t want HUDS today,’” he added.

But Kurland said Daily Provisions is much more than their breakfast sandwiches — it’s also a spot to find a friendly face.

“We want guests to walk away feeling delighted, not just like, ‘That was a good sandwich,” Kurland said.

— Staff writer Jaya N. Karamcheti can be reached at jaya.karamcheti@thecrimson.com.

— Staff writer Kevin Zhong can be reached at kevin.zhong@thecrimson.com.