It’s good to see the long-stalled NorthPoint development getting some traction again. New investors, backed by basketball great Magic Johnson, plan to initiate the first phase of the $2 billion project next summer. Phase I is planned to include 350 apartments, and at full build-out NorthPoint will consist of 22 buildings containing more housing and 2 million square feet of office and retail space.
The 44-acre project straddling Cambridge, Boston and Somerville has been beset by problems from the get-go. First it was a community legal challenge that generated two oft-cited Supreme Judicial Court decisions concerning state regulation of filled, landlocked tidelands (Moot I and Moot II) (pdf). A contentious lawsuit between the former owners also kept shovels out of the ground, and then came the near death blow of the Great Recession.
Acknowledging this as a victory for the Lakers in the long and storied Celtics-Lakers rivalry, Magic Johnson noted that Red Auerbach would be “rolling over in his grave” if he knew the former Lakers star was behind the massive project going up so close to the site of the old Boston Garden. As long as Red doesn’t put a curse on the project, Johnson and his partners will be content with a little rolling. Who knows, if Magic can pull off this trick, maybe Jack Nicholson will decide to redevelop the shuttered Circle Cinema site in Cleveland Circle.