Planning board approves special permit to convert 350 Massachusetts Ave. to lab with ground-floor retail; board conditions design review

The Cambridge Planning Board voted May 20 to grant a project-review special permit for 350 Massachusetts Ave., a five‑story office building that Biomed Realty will renovate and convert to lab space with ground-floor retail.

Biomed Realty representative Ashley Maslinski described the proposal as a reuse of a mostly vacant 1998 office building to “revitalize the ground floor space” and improve the pedestrian experience on Massachusetts Avenue. The application requests conversion to roughly 100,000 square feet of lab use with about 4,000 square feet of retail at grade; no additional vehicle parking is proposed and the project includes 30 new bicycle parking spaces.

Why the project needed a special permit

City staff explained that a change of use above 50,000 square feet in the Cambridge Port Revitalization Development District triggers the Planning Board’s project-review special-permit requirement. The project team said the design preserves most of the existing structure and brick, targets a LEED-equivalent green building approach, and aims to reduce embodied carbon by reusing the building envelope rather than constructing a new building.

Key design and operations elements discussed at the hearing

- Ground-floor activation: the applicant proposed…