University Park at MIT

University Park at MIT is a mixed-use urban renewal project in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, occupying land near Central Square between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus and the primarily residential neighborhood of Cambridgeport. It is a joint project of the City of Cambridge, MIT, and Forest City Enterprises.

The area presently known as University Park was originally an area of mostly marshy land along the Charles River. During the American Revolutionary War, one area of higher land was the site of a gun battery (now called Fort Washington) erected to guard against British attack during the Siege of Boston.

In the 1850s, the Grand Junction Railroad built tracks along what was then the swampy edge of the river. The nearby marshes were landfilled, and the area became home to a number of manufacturing plants. These included the Simplex Wire & Cable Company, the Kennedy Biscuit Company (which is the originator of the Fig Newton and is on the National Register of Historic Places), the Necco candy factory, a Sears shoe factory, and a Ford assembly plant.

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