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The city will hold a discussion over concerns raised by the business community regarding new bicycle lanes…

On Brattle Street’s busiest days, the bicycles used to swim upstream like salmon, headed (illegally) into two lanes of one-way traffic toward Harvard Square. Well, sometimes it was two lanes: Brattle was so frequently crowded with delivery trucks and (illegally) double-parked cars that the second lane was often a theoretical concept.

In the latest twist in &pizza’s quest to open in the Brattle St. location that formerly housed newsstand Crimson Corner and restaurant Tory Row, the D.C.-based pizza chain has received preliminary approval for a Harvard Square location.  The Cambridge Planning Board earlier this month voted to approve the proposed restaurant, a partnership between &pizza and Milk Bar, a dessert bakery based in New York.

July 28, 2017

Six years ago, this magazine ran an article reflecting on the many changes Harvard Square had undergone in the past 25 years: the losses of The Tasty Sandwich Shop and the Wursthaus, as well as the significant decline in independently run bookstores with the closing of the Globe Corner Bookstore and Curious George Books and Toys. The latter closed in 2011 and reopened a year later as “The World’s Only Curious George Store,” and is now once again threatened. So far this year, the Square has bid farewell to locally owned businesses like Schoenhof’s Foreign Books, and Café Algiers.

It’s been this way for years in Harvard Square — every time a business or property changes hands, it sets off debate about what the deal might mean for the neighborhood’s ever-evolving character. So imagine what might happen if a family trust goes ahead with its plans to sell two buildings — with more than a dozen storefronts — along a prime stretch of Brattle Street.

After a decade in Harvard Square, the Japanese noodle restaurant Wagamama closed its doors at 57 JFK St. for good on Sunday, July 9.  The London-based restaurant chain shuttered its Harvard Square branch in advance of the upcoming expiration of its ten-year lease. When Wagamama opened in the Square in 2007, it was the restaurant’s second U.S location. The chain now has several Boston locations and one in New York City.

A few weeks ago, Café Algiers announced that it will permanently close its doors on Brattle Street, where it has been a beloved fixture for more than 45 years. Owner Leo Diodato says it’s now possible that the café, a “sister” to Andala Coffee House in Central Square, might relocate there if it is able to secure a location in the coming month.

Month after month, in public meeting after public meeting, a trendy pizza mini-chain based in Washington, D.C., hacked its way through a thicket of bureaucratic crimson tape in the hopes of opening up shop in a vacant Harvard Square storefront.  But when the chain, called &pizza, arrived at the Cambridge Board of Zoning Appeal in April, the thicket turned into a jungle.

A proposal to open a combination pizzeria and bakery to Harvard Square took another step forward Tuesday night, when the Cambridge Planning Board voted unanimously that a new petition for a fast food license was substantially different from one the city’s Board of Zoning (BZA) had previously rejected.

A potential replacement for Harvard Square’s iconic Crimson Corner received a boost of support Monday night.  The Harvard Square Advisory Committee voted to forward a proposal to open an &Pizza and Milk Bar on Brattle Street to the Board of Zoning Appeal with a favorable recommendation. Milk Bar is a bakery style restaurant with locations in New York, Toronto, Las Vegas, and Washington D.C., where they have also partnered with &Pizza.