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University Park was born in 1983, when Forest City was selected by MIT to redevelop a 27-acre industrial site it owned adjacent to its campus. The site was once the home of the Simplex Wire and Cable Co., located in 12 buildings and manufacturers of everything from electric stoves to deep-sea telegraph cables. Simplex left Cambridge in 1970, and the property languished for fifteen years until MIT and Forest City began their work in earnest. Under a unique arrangement, MIT retained ownership of the land, Forest City developed the parcel under long-term ground leases, and Cambridge created a special zoning district in exchange for substantial infrastructure improvements. Crumbling factories and overgrown surroundings were recast as leading-edge commercial and residential space, made lively by landscaped parks and commons. Building by building, an industrial graveyard morphed into a $650 million biotechnology campus, uniting the Park with the neighborhood and, further afield, making it one of the best-known facilities of its kind in the United States.	Massachusetts Avenue and Sidney Street, Cambridge, in the mid 1980s