M.I.T.’s Kendall Square project—the latest one—gets officially underway

M.I.T. broke ground on October 9 on 314 Main Street, a 17-story addition to Kendall Square that aircraft hegemon Boeing will anchor with 100,000 square feet of lab space for developing autonomous planes (!).

The building is part of a much larger project in the Cambridge enclave with its own Red Line stop. The university’s so-called Kendall Square Initiative is due to include six new buildings with 1.8 million square feet total of offices, housing, retail, and other space.

The building at 314 Main—which is also slated to house the M.I.T. Museum—is expected to be finished in 2020.

That should be right around the time when M.I.T. will ramp up construction on another big project in Kendall: The redevelopment of the Volpe transportation hub. That mixed-use project is expected to be nearly as big as the Kendall Square Initiative, and could end up spawning Cambridge’s tallest building. Stay tuned.

• M.I.T. to start work on a ‘new front door’ to the university [Globe]
• M.I.T.’s Volpe Center redevelopment takes major step forward [Curbed Boston]
• Boston’s subway lines, ranked [Curbed Boston]
• M.I.T.’s Volpe Center redevelopment likely to include Cambridge’s tallest building[Curbed Boston]