Prognosis
How a Rundown Square Near Boston Birthed a Biotech Boom and Real Estate Empire
As Cambridge grew into a medical-innovation hub, a prescient property developer rode the transformation to riches.
The Koch Institute.
Photographer: Anna Yeroshenko for BloombergIt might have all been different had President John F. Kennedy not been assassinated. Or so the local legend goes.
Before fate intervened, the native Bostonian planned to root the U.S. space program in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A 29-acre site in Kendall Square was vacated to be the home of the electronics center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. But by the late 1960s, after Kennedy was shot, the agency’s plans changed. “Houston, we have a problem” entered the lexicon, while much of the Cambridge neighborhood fell into disrepair.