But Nelson Goddard of Cambridge Savings Bank says when the bank made the decision to give building space to Abercrombie & Fitch, Pacific Sunwear and Finagle a Bagel, there were not many other tenants interested in settling there.
"We put it on the market like any other piece of real estate," he says.
Goddard says the vendors chosen fit the bank's criteria--a good offer and good credit. Smaller stores looked at the building, he says, but did not make offers on it.
Jarold Kayden of the Harvard Graduate School of Design says it was reasonable--but also profitable--for the bank to look for these traits in its renters.
"When you're renting space, you're looking for a tenant who will pay," Kayden says, "but also who in combination with other tenants will produce the highest revenue for the site."
He says some might accept the crowding out of historic tenants if the building's exterior remains the same--hence the "historic renovation" of the Read Block, which Goddard simply blames on the Cambridge historic landmark ordinance.
"Some people may be uncomfortable with the way that we attempt to deal with economic change in the city. A frequent approach to allow change in a city is to preserve the physical appearance. This gives the public a sense of continuity," Kayden says.
What's Next
Both Kayden and Cambridge Mayor Francis H. Duehay '55 say some change is natural, even desirable, and trying to fight it is foolish.
"Historic preservation of buildings is one thing," Duehay says. "And historic preservation of businesses is another. Two hundred years ago, they may have been selling cornmeal in the Square. Do I think they should still be doing that? No."
For example, Kayden says, the Charles Hotel is actually an improvement upon the "historic" prior occupant of the same space--an old car barn for the MBTA.
It may come as a surprise that across the board, from administrators to new proprietors to the Square's old faces, every group holds optimistic proponents of the Square's new identity.
"People get sick of seeing the same shops in the Square that you can see in major malls throughout the country," Giarrusso says. "When they come into Bowl & Board, they see something completely different and it's helped us quite a bit."
So, rather than portending a "mallification" of the Square, recent trends may simply point to another kind of evolution--toward upscale, independent stores.
"The more people go around calling Harvard Square a mall, the more of a self-fulfilling prophecy it will be," Sudholz says. "People will stop coming here if they hear all it is is a mall. The people who [would] suffer the most from this are the small businesses."
Still, Sudholz says she remains positive about the future of business development in an evolving Square.
"We are still a niche for new and innovative businesses," she says. "No doubt about it."