Kendall Square, the Cambridge neighborhood best known as a biotech hub, is about to get an infusion of culture.
The nonprofit Global Arts Live announced this week that a long-planned performing arts center on the lower levels of a 16-story tower going up in the Canal District of Kendall Square not only has a name but also an opening date.
The 45,000-square-foot venue, to be called The Platform, is set to open Sept. 19, 2026, and will include a 400-seat main stage, a rehearsal studio, a 125-seat cabaret stage, indoor garden, bar, and café.
“It’s so thrilling, I can’t tell you,” Global Arts Live CEO Connie C. Chin said in an interview Friday. “This is going to be, we think, a game-changer for the ecosystem in the arts.”
Advertisement
Takeda, the Japanese biopharmaceutical company that is consolidating its research-and-development operation in the gleaming tower, is the lead corporate sponsor of the venue’s main stage, which will thus be known as the Takeda Theater at The Platform. (585 Kendall, as the new building is known, is being developed by its owner, BioMed Realty, and leased to Takeda, Massachusetts’ largest life sciences employer.)
“Takeda Theater at The Platform will be a place where people can connect and inspire one another through the performing arts,” Takeda’s Julie Kim, who is replacing Christophe Weber as the company’s CEO, said in a statement. “Our continued support for the Cambridge community is unwavering, and we are proud to be part of this important, creative space.”
Advertisement
Chin, a former dancer who took over at Global Arts Live in 2021, said The Platform has been designed to address a documented need in the Greater Boston arts scene for adequate rehearsal and performance spaces for smaller arts organizations. She said both The Platform’s performance and rehearsal spaces will be available to independent artists and groups at subsidized rates, with 25 nights per year offered rent free.
“There was so much listening in the community — good listening — about what’s needed,” she said. “People were saying, ‘We need spaces that we can afford and spaces that are available’ — available in a way that the Boston ecosystem for dance and music and the arts hasn’t been.”
The Canal District parcel had been eyed as a possible site for a performing arts space for several years before BioMed Realty finally acquired it in 2018.
Chin said the addition of new stages and rehearsal spaces, as well as the bar and cafe, will be good not only for artists and organizations, but also for the neighborhood, which is dominated by looming steel-and-glass structures.
“Somebody who comes from the biotech community but also loves the arts said, ‘Kendall Square always felt kind of soulless,’” she said. “This idea of bringing the spirit and creativity of artists can only help that. Scientists are creative people, in innovation, and to add the arts is a heady mix.
“We want the space to be equally welcoming to the person with a laptop under their arm and to the young person with a skateboard under their arm,” Chin said. “But they can’t ride in the building.”
Advertisement
Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com. Follow him @MarkAShanahan.