Kendall Square

FEBRUARY 2, 2012, MIDNIGHT SPRING HILL, SOMERVILLE I am no one's idea of a morning person, but I have still set my bedside alarm clock for an ungodly hour. I've been handed an assignment that is half reporting challenge, half endurance test – spending a full day in Kendall Square – and I need to get an early start.   I'm supposed to investigate the theory that Cambridge's Kendall Square, which has languished as a wind-swept tech corridor for decades, has finally reached some kind of tipping point.

Tatte Bakery & Cafe, opened earlier this month, is the newest addition to the Kendall Square food mecca. This is the second and more ambitious location of the Brookline bakery Tatte Fine Cookies & Cakes, owned by Israel-born pastry chef Tzurit Or. The Kendall spot offers breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and coffee and little baked luxuries all day. Taste some of Or's favorite dishes from her homeland and North Africa, along with European classics,...

A California developer will break ground today on an 11-acre, $500 million laboratory, office, and residential complex in Cambridge's Kendall Square, one of the largest construction projects to start in Greater Boston this year. Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. of Pasadena will start construction with a six-story headquarters for drug giant Biogen Idec Inc., which will move its executive offices from Weston. The development plans call for seven buildings, including two residential structures, in the heart of a commercial district that continues to attract the biotechnology giants whose growth has...

It's official: Riding a bicycle is the fastest way to travel from Davis to Kendall squares during rush hour. This morning, LivableStreets Alliance, the Somerville Bicycle Committee, and the Cambridge Bicycle Committee hosted a rush hour race between a biker, an MBTA rider, and a driver. Jackie Douglas, executive director for LivableStreets, said the three-mile race was geared to raise awareness on the different options people have for commuting and the benefits of riding a bike or using public transportation.

THE THING about generational opportunities is just that — they’re generational. And since they don’t pop up every day, when one gets botched, lots of people are stuck with the consequences for a very long time. There is a generational opportunity in MIT’s bid to rezone Kendall Square, a plan that’s pending before the city of Cambridge. The proposal takes stock of a few decades’ worth of complaints about the city’s core business district, and offers to erase all of them through a few years of concentrated redevelopment effort.

BioMed Realty Trust Inc., a California real estate firm that is a Kendall Square landlord, said Thursday that AVEO Pharmaceuticals Inc. has signed a 12-year lease to relocate its operations to 650 East Kendall St. in Cambridge. AVEO currently occupies space at three Cambridge addresses on Sidney and Emily streets near Massachusetts Avenue, an AVEO spokesman said. Moving to Kendall Square, a hotbed for life sciences companies, will enable AVEO to consolidate operations under one roof and have more room.

KPMG LLP, an audit, tax, and advisory firm, is looking to expand its practice for early-stage technology and life science companies by leasing space for a new office in Kendall Square, a high-tech hub in Cambridge near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The opportunity to be "part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem near MIT is very important to us," Pat Canning, managing partner for KPMG's Boston office, said in a statement. The new office of roughly two dozen people at One Broadway will be the home base of Ed Sullivan, who leads KPMG's New England Venture Capital Practice,...

A development that would clear the way for a major expansion of Google offices in Kendall Square surfaced before the Cambridge City Council tonight and was tabled amid questions by members of the public and city officials. The proposal by Boston Properties Limited Partnership would construct a 25,000-square-foot building that would connect existing buildings at Four and Five Cambridge Center where Google already has office space. According to a letter Boston Properties sent to Cambridge last week, the connector building is part of a larger project being undertaken in...

Google Inc. will relocate subsidiary ITA Software of Cambridge to its Kendall Square offices, after finalizing a deal to create an "urban campus" with more than 800 employees, making it the search giant's fourth-largest US location. ITA's 500 staffers, who now work half a mile away, will join more than 300 Google employees in a three-building Kendall Square complex connected by new glass passageways and built to accommodate further growth. Google bought ITA, a travel software company, in 2010 for $700 million.

When Ben Carcio's idea for a Web start-up won a national competition last year, the prize included free office space at a dream address for techies: Kendall Square. He was surrounded by engineers from Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc., and the venture capitalists who fund young tech companies. But when his year of free space ran out, Carcio found he could not afford Kendall Square's soaring rents and last month moved his company, Promoboxx, to the South End in Boston. "We were 100 percent committed to Kendall Square, and we had no choice but to look elsewhere," said...

BioMed Realty Trust Inc., a California real estate firm that is a Kendall Square landlord, said Thursday that AVEO Pharmaceuticals Inc. has signed a 12-year lease to relocate its operations to 650 East Kendall St. in Cambridge. AVEO currently occupies space at three Cambridge addresses on Sidney and Emily streets near Massachusetts Avenue, an AVEO spokesman said. Moving to Kendall Square, a hotbed for life sciences companies, will enable AVEO to consolidate operations under one roof and have more room.

Dina Rudick, Globe Staff Boston area bicycling and public transit ridership are booming. That's good for the environment and your pocketbook, but what about your precious time? Which mode of transportation is quickest? Find out the answer Monday at the Boston Bike Week 2012 kick-off event. In Rush Hour Race , an automobile driver, a cyclist, and a T rider travel from Davis Square to Kendall Square in a rush to the finish. Who do you think will get there first?

KPMG LLP, an audit, tax, and advisory firm, is looking to expand its practice for early-stage technology and life science companies by leasing space for a new office in Kendall Square, a high-tech hub in Cambridge near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The opportunity to be "part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem near MIT is very important to us," Pat Canning, managing partner for KPMG's Boston office, said in a statement. The new office of roughly two dozen people at One Broadway will be the home base of Ed Sullivan, who leads KPMG's New England Venture...

Kendall Square is the region's high-tech hub, a magnet for innovators and start-ups. Yet for all their know-how, engineers, scientists, and others here are routinely stumped making the simplest technology connection: a cellphone call. Many who work in Kendall say reception is so weak in some places, spotty in others, that dropped signals, failed calls, and stalled e-mails are frequent problems. "I have to duck into a conference room at just a certain angle to talk on the phone," said Reed Sturtevant, a former executive at Microsoft Corp.

I am writing regarding the April 13 front-page article "Start-ups squeezed out of Kendall Sq. " I applaud Cambridge for having created a place, for a whole host of reasons, that is so desirable for so many innovative start-up companies. I believe that this kind of attraction is a benefit to the entire region. In that sense, I would suggest that Watertown offers many of the benefits due to our proximity to both Cambridge and Boston, but with a much more reasonable rate for office space.

When Ben Carcio's idea for a Web start-up won a national competition last year, the prize included free office space at a dream address for techies: Kendall Square. He was surrounded by engineers from Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc., and the venture capitalists who fund young tech companies. But when his year of free space ran out, Carcio found he could not afford Kendall Square's soaring rents and last month moved his company, Promoboxx, to the South End in Boston. "We were 100 percent committed to Kendall Square, and we had no choice but to look elsewhere," said Carcio.

Kendall Square is the region's high-tech hub, a magnet for innovators and start-ups. Yet for all their know-how, engineers, scientists, and others here are routinely stumped making the simplest technology connection: a cellphone call. Many who work in Kendall say reception is so weak in some places, spotty in others, that dropped signals, failed calls, and stalled e-mails are frequent problems. "I have to duck into a conference room at just a certain angle to talk on the phone," said Reed Sturtevant, a former executive at Microsoft Corp.

RE "INJECTING life into Kendall Square" (Page A1, Nov. 30): How about a public park to inject some life into this section of Cambridge? Post Office Square Park in Boston did wonders for its surroundings, providing a beautiful refuge from a similar fortress-like environment of concrete, glass, and steel. I was astonished that the article doesn't include any suggestions of this possibility. It seems to me such an obvious need, and something MIT surely has the resources to bring about.

My overcrowded calendar in March had me attending a tech conference in San Francisco, dining in Manhattan with people who run "accelerator" programs for start-ups, meeting entrepreneurs and MBA students in Istanbul, and, back in Boston, speaking with trade representatives from Spain's Catalonia region. Leaving the neighborhood and collecting perspectives from other places is one good way to take the measure of the innovation economy here. So where does Massachusetts stand in 2012, as it tries to maintain - and build upon - its track record as a center of innovation in an increasingly...

Google Inc. will relocate subsidiary ITA Software of Cambridge to its Kendall Square offices, after finalizing a deal to create an "urban campus" with more than 800 employees, making it the search giant's fourth-largest US location. ITA's 500 staffers, who now work half a mile away, will join more than 300 Google employees in a three-building Kendall Square complex connected by new glass passageways and built to accommodate further growth. Google bought ITA, a travel software company, in 2010 for $700 million.