CambridgeSide was still one of Greater Boston’s stronger malls when its owners began remaking it. It had around 100 shops, and about 7 million people a year still visited.
It opened in East Cambridge in 1990 as an indoor mall by the water near the Museum of Science, at a time when malls in this area usually meant going out to the suburbs.
Then Kendall Square grew. The nearby blocks filled with life-science companies, and the third floor could be recast as lab or office space in a neighborhood built around biotech…