CambridgeSide, Cambridge, MA

 

CambridgeSide is a one million square foot mall that was developed and is still owned by New England Development and is located in the East Cambridge neighborhood of Cambridge, MA. CambridgeSide is a pretty popular mall due to it's close proximity to Harvard Square and Downtown Boston and also just because the stores here cater to many different types of demographics.

CambridgeSide opened in 1990 with three floors of shopping and has recently consolidated itself down to only two floors of stores and restaurants. The original anchor stores were Filene's, Lechmere, and Sears. Lechmere closed in 1997 when the whole chain went bankrupt and became Best Buy on level one and half of level two. The other half became Border's which. closed in 2011 and then became T.J. Maxx. The third floor became Macy's Home Store which closed in the spring of last year. Filene's which closed in 2006 and immediately became Macy's. Sears was the most anchor closure only closing in December 2018 and that anchor space is vacant and will most likely stay that way. The mall was part of the 1978 East Cambridge Riverfront Plan which was basically a revival plain that was used to build the mall, apartments, landscaping, and the Lechmere Train Stop. Today the mall's anchor are Best Buy, Macy's, and T.J. Maxx. The mall has two sit down restaurants The Cheesecake Factory and World of Beer. As a whole the mall has 80 stores including Apple, Sephora, H&M, Old Navy, Swarovski, and Bath & Body Works.

CambridgeSide has changed a lot in the last five years and honestly it's completely unrecognizable. Which is a good and a bad thing. In 2017 the mall was renovated and rebranded from CambridgeSide Galleria to just simply CambridgeSide. I remembered when this renovation was happening and I can remember my gut telling me that something much bigger was in store for this mall than a simple renovation and I was right. Fast forward a year and a half Sears closed.  After Sears closed the mall announced that all the shops on the third level would be closing to make way for 100 CambridgeSide Place which is office space on the third floor of the mall. New England Development didn't stop there though. In December 2019 the city approved a redevelopment that still doesn't make all that much sense to me even after researching it many times.

When CambridgeSide opened in 1990 it became one of the area's premier shopping mall hurting or killing off smaller local malls or even some larger malls such as Fresh Pond Mall, Assembly Square Mall, and Arsenal Mall which is currently getting redeveloped into Arsenal Yards. CambridgeSide was also one of the first locations of The Cheesecake Factory in the Boston area. I think CambridgeSide will be around for a while but it will definitely look different in the future.

Here are my photos of CambridgeSide from 2018, 2019, and 2020.

2018

 

2019

2020