At the Lechmere Canal site in East Cambridge, where an enormous hotel-office-condominium-park development is planned, bids will be opened later this week on the first phase of construction.

The bids--which should hit about $2 million--are from contractors who want to dredge out the old Lechmere Canal and do other basic work for the park development; landscaping and other finishing touches will be put out to bid in the spring.

As many as 20 contractors may bid, Vickery said. "Apparently it's an excellent time to do this sort of work because contractors are hungry," he added. Other parts of the development package, including a 104-room expansion of the Sonesta Hotel, will begin in the spring, Vickery said.

Across the city, near Alewife Brook and the Fresh Pond parkway, city developers are watching construction on the Red Line extension proceed so they can set a timetable for work on another major office development.

Road improvement work will begin in the fairly near future, and some agreements for leases with major companies have already been signed, Vickery said. Any major effort is not likely to "come on line" before subway construction is completed in 1984, however, he added.

In Cambridgeport--where city planners have had enormous trouble trying to lure private investment--a compromise zoning package may be in the works. The Planning Board is expected to recommend tonight that portions of two competing proposals--one from MIT, the other from local residents--be adopted by the city council, Vickery said.

The MIT proposal would allow more large scale development on the Mass Ave and MIT edges of Cambridgeport; the community proposal would focus more on housing in the lower two-thirds of the neighborhood. A lengthy council battle is expected.

The project that may interest more Cambridge residents than any other--the development of cable television--may also be ready for city council consideration this winter.

An advisory committee recommended a year ago that the city own and operate its own cable system, a fairly novel approach. That committee also recommended construction and economic feasibility studies. The first report, which will outline construction problems and present a preliminary design, should be ready by the end of the week; the second, which will address alternative ownership and financing schemes, may be done by early January, Joseph Sakey, who chaired the advisory committee, said yesterday.

"The council will have all the data it needs by February or March" and could make a decision by early spring if it wished to, Sakey said.

Virtually every longterm project still in the works began under the tenure of former city manager James L. Sullivan, who left in mid-summer after nine years on the job to take over as director of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

Sullivan said yesterday he misses Cambridge, but added that his new role has "plenty of excitement." A top priority at the moment is helping the Hub find its way out of a pressing financial crisis, he says, adding that most attention is focused on Beacon Hill, where state legislators are considering the "Tregor Plan" to authorize new city borrowing and bail Boston out.

Legislature attempts to tamper with the Tregor bill are counterproductive, he says; if it emerges from the State House open to legal challenge, then investors won't go near the plan. The "chamber is trying to help out the relationship between private and public sectors," he said.

Perhaps Sullivan would have stayed in Cambridge if he had made use of the services of the Unidentified Flying Idea, a massage collective. For the last few weeks, the group has offered city workers a free massage on their lunch breaks in an attempt to counter "anxiety neurosis." So far the plan has drawn a lot of stares, more press coverage, and even a few compliments.

Since 1979, when construction on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's (MBTA) Red Line extension began in Harvard Square, students have been bothered by early morning noise and residents have complained of continual disruption of pedestrian and motor traffic.