New federal legislation passed last month will relieve Cambridge's Kendall Square Urban Renewal Project from additional financial burdens relating to the project's completion, City Manager James L. Sullivan said last week.
President Ford signed Senate Bill 848 into law while vacationing in Vail, Colo. guaranteeing restitution to the city for an eight-year construction slowdown on the project.
Twenty-nine of the project's 45 acres were set aside in 1964 at the request of the federal government, for a planned National Aeronautics and Space Administration electronics research center.
In December 1969, after gradually phasing out the project, NASA withdrew totally, leaving the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority to re-plan the entire project at a severely inflated cost.
The new bill will limit the city's costs for completion of the project to its original $6.5 million contribution, made mostly by MIT, and is expected to save the city approximately $7.5 million, Sullivan said. Sullivan said that the legislation, along with a $15 million commitment by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, provides a "giant step" towards the project's completion.
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