The Spy’s Dave Wheelan and WHCP Community Radio’s Jim Brady continue their quarterly check-in with the City of Cambridge’s police chief, Justin Todd.  In this segment, Chief Todd discusses crime rates in Cambridge and nationally and some of the factors that have helped the City reduce its crime rate over the last year.  The Chief also talks about the renewal of the evening curfew for young people going to effect.

This video is approximately 12 minutes in length.

Richard Zeidman

The ongoing dispute between the City of Cambridge and Cambridge Waterfront Development Incorporated (CWDI) took a significant turn recently. Yesterday, Richard Zeidman, a CWDI board member whom the city had insisted should resign, stepped down from his position.

Equally noteworthy is that both parties have agreed to submit their issues to arbitration. This decision was confirmed after a CWDI meeting, where Cambridge Mayor Stephen Rideout provided WHCP with an update on the situation.

“We are going to be going into mediation to address all of these issues,” Mayor Rideout stated. He emphasized the importance of including the change in the articles of incorporation in the mediation to resolve all matters of controversy simultaneously.

When asked about the sudden move towards mediation, Mayor Rideout mentioned that the lawyers suggested it, and he agreed, recognizing the necessity of mediation to resolve the ongoing issues.

Mayor Rideout, a retired judge, expressed cautious optimism about the mediation process. He believes that resolving these issues is crucial for the betterment of Cambridge, anticipating that the development will benefit the city and its citizens.

The mediator, a retired judge with expertise in real estate, has been identified and is trusted by both CWDI’s and the city’s legal counsel.

As a result of these developments, the city’s plans to modify the charter that established CWD I have been put on hold. Both parties will request the judge overseeing the lawsuits and counter-lawsuits to stay those proceedings as they move into arbitration.

This agreement marks a pivotal step towards resolving the long-standing dispute, with hopes that it will lead to a positive outcome for the future development of Cambridge’s waterfront.

As tensions over control of the Cambridge Harbor development have intensified in these last two weeks, state officials are pressing Cambridge city leaders and members of Cambridge Waterfront Development Incorporated to resolve their conflicts. 

State Representative Tom Hutchinson said he was on a cruise in the Caribbean when his phone heated up with text messages about the simmering dispute when he returned. He organized a meeting last week with Mayor Steve Rideout, Ward 1 Commissioner Laurel Atkiss and CWDI president Angie Hengst and board member Frank Narr.

“I asked if the city and CWDI, respectively, would mind getting together to talk, and both sides thought that would be a good thing,” Hutchison said. “And so we just scheduled an informal meeting and we sat down with the mayor and Laurel and Angie and Frank and myself, and it gave us a great opportunity to open up some dialogue and figure out how we’re going to move forward with this.”

Hutchinson said Jake Day, secretary of Maryland’s Department of Housing and Community Development, was particularly concerned about the growing conflict over Cambridge Harbor, which the state has invested with millions of dollars in grants. Hutchinson said Day was pleased the sides had at least come together.

“This is a big project for the state and I had talked to Secretary Day about all of this as well and he was concerned,” Hutchison said. “So it was a good start and probably within the next 30 days you’ll be hearing more great things coming out about the project.”

Hengst said she left the meeting with a positive feeling. She said details of the talks were confidential, but she did acknowledge that CWDI had agreed to put out a request for proposals to master site developers.

That was a requirement of the 2022 property transfer agreement with the city. That agreement also states that CWDI must publicly post for 30 days summaries of all developers’ proposals and must select a master site developer before any of the city’s donated land can be sold or transferred.

 CWDI has yet to comply with those covenants, but is preparing to sell city donated land to yacht maintenance company, and to a still unannounced hotel company.

Atkiss said it remains to be seen if CWDI will address those covenants. One thing the mayor agreed to, she said, was to wait before enacting his corporate amendments to CWDI. He originally allowed 10 days for public comment after his April 16th announcement, but Atkiss said he has agreed to allow CWDI to consider accepting them at their May 22nd meeting before he enacts them in his role as the corporate member of CWDI.

“There’s a real push by the state to make sure we come back into alignment and start working together to really make sure that everyone knows what’s going on,” Atkiss said. “The state and the city included just clear up a lot of the disagreements and lacks of clarity. So I can’t say a whole lot about what to expect next because there’s some kind of things that we both have to do moving forward, but it was a positive meeting.

“A lot of discussion was had about expectations and what’s considered reasonable moving forward, and I think we’ve started a dialogue that’s going to be very healthy and very productive, which is something I know we haven’t really seen before, Atkiss said. “There is a requirement from the state that a true RFP be issued for the second phase of this, where outside of yacht maintenance and the hotel, that’s the first phase that they’re still looking at. So for this second phase coming up there is going to have to be a specific RFP process and they are going to have to share that information going forward. So that’s something that I know everybody’s going to feel good about and we should have a sigh of relief that there’s been some clarification there of what is expected there and it’s very defined and that should give us all some insight that we haven’t had before.”

Participants in the meeting said they’re hopeful – but not certain – the ongoing meetings will prevent a court battle between Cambridge and CWDI. Cambridge has set aside $500,000 for the potential court case.

“I can’t predict anything in the future, but that is my objective that we can work together as partners as we all are,” Hutchison said. “It’s a four-way partnership between CWDI, the city, the county, and the state, and that I believe it’s best that the parties speak to each other and we don’t do it through an expensive legal process.”

In the most recent exchange, lawyers for CWDI threatened to take the city to court even before Mayor Steve Rideout announced on April 16th his proposed changes to CDIs charter. His changes would make CWDI give the city access to its documents, assert the city’s right to remove appointees to the board and make CWDI responsive to city leaders Directions. 

Responding to C WDI i’s attorneys the city’s special counsel stated that CWDI is already out of compliance with covenants of the city’s 2022 property transfer agreement when it created a holding company and transferred city property to it. 

Attorney Timothy Maloney gave CWDI until Friday to produce proof that it had put out a request for proposals, make their summaries public, and selected a developer.

Rideout said the city will not relent on the conditions of its transfer agreements but declined to comment further. Narr did not respond to requests for interviews.

By Jim Brady
WHCP Radio

Last week the news of Tom Carroll’s resignation spread throughout Cambridge quickly. The highly respected city manager made it official that he would step down as the city’s chief administrator in May after only serving 22 months in office. Added to this bit of disruptive news was that Carroll made no bones about that he was leaving due to the direct fact that he had lost confidence in the nonprofit Cambrige Waterfront Development Inc. leadership and its plans to develop the Cambridge Harbor project.

This was clearly on the minds of the Spy’s Dave Wheelan and WHCP Community Radio’s Jim Brady as they continued their series have frequent check-ins with Mayor Steve Rideout.

This video is approximately 15 minutes in length.