By Karen Klinger

Porter Square residents are wondering what will happen now at the site of the Japanese-Korean Kaya restaurant after the Cambridge Board of Zoning Appeal turned down the owner's bid to tear down the eatery and put up a 50-room hotel.

Despite a show of support for the project by a number of neighbors, the board voted 4-to-1 at a lengthy February 28 hearing to reject owner Meehn Su Gim's request for a variance to build a five-story hotel and attached 210-seat restaurant on the property at 1924 Massachusetts Ave.

Board member Gus Alexander reflected the majority opinion, saying "It's too much of a building for this site," adding, "You're asking us to rezone the property, and that's not our jurisdiction."

"You get an 'A' for effort," board member Edward Wayland told
Gim and his architect, Michael McKee, noting that they had met repeatedly with abutters and other neighbors over the course of a year and had modified the project to meet their concerns. But he said Gim was attempting to deviate too far from zoning regulations by proposing to build a structure with more than twice the allowable square footage for a commercial building on the site. read more...

By Karen Klinger

In a long-awaited hearing, the city's zoning board is set to review a plan for a 50-room hotel and attached 210-seat restaurant in Porter Square that has residents divided about its likely impact on the traffic-clogged neighborhood.

Meehn Su Gim, owner of the restaurant Kaya at 1924 Massachusetts Ave., wants to demolish the current one-story building on the site and replace it with a five-story hotel and restaurant with an outdoor cafe area. Gim plans to ask the Cambridge Board of Zoning Appeal (BZA) at a meeting February 28 to allow him to build more square footage than current zoning law allows and to approve variances letting him deviate from certain parking, height, setback and loading zoan requirements.

The 24,000-square-foot structure Gim envisions would be permitted "as of right" if it were a residential building, but is substantially larger than zoning regulations allow for commercial use. To gain support for the project, Gim and his architect, Michael McKee, have been meeting for the past year with abutting property owners and neighborhood groups. read more...

City residents will get another chance to look at plans for a proposed five-story, 50-room hotel in Porter Square and ask questions of the architect and developer at a forum Wednesday, December 12, at the North Cambridge Senior Center.

Cambridge architect Michael McPhee and Meehn Su Gim, owner of the Kaya restaurant at 1924 Massachusetts Ave., will be on hand to discuss detailed plans and a traffic analysis for the hotel, which Gim wants to build on the Kaya site. The plans also call for a 210-seat restaurant and nightclub, a two-level underground parking garage for up to 50 cars and a pocket park on the rear of the property, adjacent to Porter Road.

The North Cambridge Stabilization Committee is sponsoring the forum. In November, McKee and Gim showed the plans to members of the Porter Square Neighbors Association, saying they are seeking variances from the city to waive certain height, setback, density and commercial use regulations for the site, which is partially zoned for residential development. read more...

After nearly a year of back-and-forth discussion with neighbors, the architect for a developer who wants to build a hotel in Porter Square has unveiled new plans for a 50-room, five-story building encompassing a restaurant and cafe with two levels of underground parking.

At a meeting of the Porter Square Neighbors Association, Cambridge architect Michael McKee said that in order to be economically viable, the developer will need to obtain several variances for aspects of the project that deviate from the city's zoning ordinance.

Meehn Su Gim, the owner of the Korean-Japanese restaurant Kaya at 1924 Massachusetts Ave., wants to tear down the building and replace it with a nearly 50,000-square-foot hotel that would include a landscaped public park on the rear of the site on top of the parking garage.

McKee acknowledged that Gim will need the support of Porter Square residents in order to obtain variances which chiefly involve exceptions to the zoning code's size limitations for a commercial building and for the proposed parking scheme. read more...