By Karen Klinger

By a unanimous vote, the Cambridge Historical Commission gave the go-ahead “in principle” January 7 to a controversial condominium complex on the site of St. James’s Episcopal Church in Porter Square, but they still had questions about the project, especially the degree to which it will help preserve the iconic church building.

While all seven commissioners present at the meeting signaled that they favored approving a “certificate of appropriateness” necessary for local builder Oaktree Development to demolish the church’s deteriorating parish hall as the first step in constructing the condos, they stopped short of actually doing so.

At the suggestion of the commission's executive director, Charles Sullivan, commissioners decided to hold off on final approval until they heard more information about three lingering issues: details on materials to be used in the building construction; the revamped landscaping plan for the church’s much-loved Knights Garden; and St. James’s “capital plan” for preserving its stone sanctuary.

Their decision means Oaktree and the church, its partner in the proposed development, will have to wait at least another month until the commission meets again to get the city’s required sign off on the demolition. The planned condos have become a contentious issue in the church’s North Cambridge neighborhood, where many residents believe the complex will be incompatible with the area’s mostly Victorian houses.

Current plans call for a four-story, 78,000-square-foot modern architecture-style development of 46 upscale condos to be built in an “L” shape adjacent to St. James’s, partly on the Oaktree-owned former site of the Cambridge Car Wash at 2013 Massachusetts Avenue and partly on the church’s property next door at Mass Ave and Beech Street.

Last month, the Cambridge Planning Board voted to conditionally approve a special permit for the project, but did so with the understanding that the final OK would depend on the agreement of the city and state historical commissions.

When the city historical commissioners held a hearing on the plan in December, they voted 4-1 to initiate a study that could lead to landmark status for the 120-year-old Romanesque Revival stone church.

They acted over the objections of representatives of both the church and Oaktree, who warned that any significant delays caused by the landmarking process might scuttle the project, which has been in the works for well over a year.

The Massachusetts Historical Commission (MHC) has a say in the plan as well as the city because in 1987, St. James’s governing body agreed to a “preservation restriction” on the church’s property in return for a state grant to restore the sanctuary roof. In 2004, the church received another grant—this time to restore the church’s belfry—of combined state and city funds provided by the Massachusetts Community Preservation Act.

In a letter sent last month to the church and city, the MHC’s historical architect Paul Holtz said that the state agency was concerned, among other issues, about the four-story height of the project, indicating that its preference would be a three-story structure that would top out below the ridge line of the church roof.

In response, Oaktree representative Ricardo Dumont told the city’s historical commissioners that the developer, while keeping the four stories, has revised its plans so that the condo complex’s roof will now be two feet under the ridge line of the church sanctuary.

In a slide and animation presentation, Dumont also showed the commission Oaktree’s latest concept for incorporating the Knights Garden into the condo plan. The garden was designed in 1915 by pioneering city planner John Nolen and its future has been a focus of much discussion among city officials and the church’s neighbors.

Dumont explained that in the new design, the garden—around which the condo complex would be built—would be comprised of a grove of birch trees and ground cover plants in the portion closest to Mass Ave with a stone path leading to a labrynth based on historic “Christian gardens.”

Questions Raised on Financial Arrangement Between Church and Developer

The reaction of the commissioners seemed lukewarm, but chairman William King said he was less concerned about the design of the garden than ensuring that the condominium development would provide the money St. James’s needs for the long-term preservation of its irreplaceable church.

When plans for the condo project first became public about a year ago, the church indicated that it expected to receive an endowment from Oaktree that would be put into a building preservation fund. Just how much money was involved was unclear, but the figure $3 million was frequently mentioned.

Information that emerged prior to, and during, the commission hearing put a different spin on things, however. St. James's rector, Holly Lyman Antolini, said in a letter to the city that an arrangement calling for Oaktree to replace the parish house with space that would take up most of the first floor of the condo development would give the church a "2-million dollar savings" on the task of replacing the hall--quite different from a $2 million cash endowment.

In addition, Antolini said the balance of the money the church expected to gain from its partnership from Oaktree would come not from an upfront lump-sum payment but from a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the condos.

Antolini also disclosed in her letter that while the church’s governing vestry has a memorandum of understanding with Oaktree, it “has not yet reached the signing of a legal agreement” with the developer.

In the end, King concluded that not just the commission but the public needed to know more about the financial details of the arrangement.

One member of the public, church neighbor and Beech Street resident Preston Gralla, told the commission that more needs to be known about “just how much money the church would get out of this development.”

Especially given the current economic downturn, to “try to tie your future to the health of the real estate market is pretty dangerous,” he said.