The Cambridge Street reconstruction is finished — maybe. Workmen were out on the median last week picking the plastic bags out of the bushes and otherwise cleaning up, a good sign that someone is paying attention.

The buildings along the street have more appeal than they did 20 years ago when the idea for Cambridge Street’s reconstruction first took root. Some of you won’t remember how a shabby Sporters became the Hill Tavern, but it did. A new building filled a seedy parking lot. An old cigar factory that had been morphed into a strange-looking church has become a Mexican restaurant with loft-like condominiums above.

Whole Foods, the renovated plaza and its businesses, and at, the other end, the Liberty Hotel, the new Charles/MGH station and MGH’s Yawkey Center have done much to make the street more useful for its adjacent neighborhoods. And the sidewalk dining is as popular as we hoped it would be when the reconstruction widened the sidewalk in selected blocks. Continue reading →