Developer Jack Englert wanted to erect 227 apartments near the last outbound stop of the Red Line in North Cambridge.
Englert's Criterion Development Partners yesterday knocked down and ground underfoot the old Faces discotheque sign that had greeted commuters barreling in along Route 2 for decades. Few, like the music it personified, mourned it.
More than 50 people including city officials, developers and neighbors, braved heavy rain Wednesday to see the discotheque sign torn down. Some onlookers huddled under a tent, and some endured getting wet to see the sign fall.“I thought I might cry I was so happy,” said Carolyn Mieth, 72, who lives in North Cambridge and said she has wanted the Faces sign and building down for years.
The nightclub has been vacant along Route 2 since 1990 and had been owned by the Martignetti family, which also owns the neighboring Lanes and Games bowling alley and the Cambridge Gateway Inn.
Englert expects to start demolishing the building itself in the next couple of weeks, and construction on the 227 apartments (with an equal number of parking spaces!) will commence shortly thereafter. That should take two years. And it's about damn time. “People were so excited to see the sign come down,” Englert told The Globe's Brock Parker. “It was like the launching of a rocket. There’s just been so much pent-up interest in this site for 20 years.”
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