Archives: Media Room

July 28, 2017

Six years ago, this magazine ran an article reflecting on the many changes Harvard Square had undergone in the past 25 years: the losses of The Tasty Sandwich Shop and the Wursthaus, as well as the significant decline in independently run bookstores with the closing of the Globe Corner Bookstore and Curious George Books and Toys. The latter closed in 2011 and reopened a year later as “The World’s Only Curious George Store,” and is now once again threatened. So far this year, the Square has bid farewell to locally owned businesses like Schoenhof’s Foreign Books, and Café Algiers.

It’s been this way for years in Harvard Square — every time a business or property changes hands, it sets off debate about what the deal might mean for the neighborhood’s ever-evolving character. So imagine what might happen if a family trust goes ahead with its plans to sell two buildings — with more than a dozen storefronts — along a prime stretch of Brattle Street.

After a decade in Harvard Square, the Japanese noodle restaurant Wagamama closed its doors at 57 JFK St. for good on Sunday, July 9.  The London-based restaurant chain shuttered its Harvard Square branch in advance of the upcoming expiration of its ten-year lease. When Wagamama opened in the Square in 2007, it was the restaurant’s second U.S location. The chain now has several Boston locations and one in New York City.

A few weeks ago, Café Algiers announced that it will permanently close its doors on Brattle Street, where it has been a beloved fixture for more than 45 years. Owner Leo Diodato says it’s now possible that the café, a “sister” to Andala Coffee House in Central Square, might relocate there if it is able to secure a location in the coming month.

Month after month, in public meeting after public meeting, a trendy pizza mini-chain based in Washington, D.C., hacked its way through a thicket of bureaucratic crimson tape in the hopes of opening up shop in a vacant Harvard Square storefront.  But when the chain, called &pizza, arrived at the Cambridge Board of Zoning Appeal in April, the thicket turned into a jungle.

A proposal to open a combination pizzeria and bakery to Harvard Square took another step forward Tuesday night, when the Cambridge Planning Board voted unanimously that a new petition for a fast food license was substantially different from one the city’s Board of Zoning (BZA) had previously rejected.

A potential replacement for Harvard Square’s iconic Crimson Corner received a boost of support Monday night.  The Harvard Square Advisory Committee voted to forward a proposal to open an &Pizza and Milk Bar on Brattle Street to the Board of Zoning Appeal with a favorable recommendation. Milk Bar is a bakery style restaurant with locations in New York, Toronto, Las Vegas, and Washington D.C., where they have also partnered with &Pizza.

Just one month shy of the five-year anniversary of the closing of Harvard Loews, real estate mogul Gerald Chan announced plans to bring a movie theater back to the beloved spot.  Chan and his team at Kirche LLC presented their idea Wednesday, May 31, for a multi-use space that would include a theater with two screens, ground-floor retail and offices on the top floors, according to a Kirche press release.

Bookbinder and auxiliary police volunteer, friend to the homeless and to those who call Harvard University home, Bob Marshall was a fixture in Harvard Square for more than 45 years.

March 31, 2017

The owner of the former Harvard Square Theater property has not made public his plans for the property more than a month after the Cambridge City Council gave him 30 days to do so.  The theater was a Harvard Square icon from its opening in 1925 until it closed in 2012. Morningside Group, a firm headed by billionaire investor and Harvard donor Gerald L. Chan, purchased the property in 2015 from real estate developer Richard L. Friedman.