Source : Business Times – 17 Sep 2009
Community activists say that abandoned projects blighted their neighbourhood
Harvard University has provoked protest and confrontation in a nearby Boston neighbourhood where the school is backing away from plans to build housing and laboratories on land that it took years to buy.
Community activists in Allston, a section of Boston across the Charles River from Harvard’s main campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, say that university delays have left a ‘blighted’ neighbourhood of vacant businesses, stalled construction sites and invading rats.
Harvard president Drew Faust said in an announcement in February that construction of a US$1 billion science centre in Allston would be slowed because of a ‘bleak’ economic outlook.
Harry Mattison, a member of the Allston Brighton North Neighbors Forum, said that his group will fight a real estate swap that would give Harvard land next to its campus in Allston unless the university develops more of its unused property.
‘They’ve been showing us all these renderings for more than a decade of how wonderful this neighbourhood is going to be,’ Mr Mattison said. ‘Now, they’re shifting their focus elsewhere, and the blue- collar residents of Allston are left holding the bag, living with the mistake Harvard made by purchasing all this land.’
If Harvard’s neighbours are not satisfied with the plan for the new housing complex, they can oppose re-zoning needed for the project, possibly through the courts, said Jessica Shumaker, a spokeswoman for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which oversees city planning.
Sweeping vision
Four years ago, former Harvard president Lawrence Summers announced a sweeping vision of Allston, home to about 20,000 people, as ‘a completely integral extension of the university’. In June, 2008, the school released pictures of the science centre, surrounded by trees.
Harvard scaled back its ambitions after the biggest recession since World War II cut into its endowment. In November last year, the school said that it would reduce capital spending, once projected at about US$1 billion annually over the next four years, by as much as half because of losses in the fund.
The school said on Sept 10 that its endowment investments fell US$10.1 billion, or 27 per cent. The fund’s value is now US$26 billion after US$1.7 billion in payouts, Harvard said.
High-rise cranes have been removed from the site over the past two months, Mr Mattison said. Residents said that rats have fled the building area to invade their neighbourhoods. School-owned properties in Allston, including a 400,000 square foot office building, a petrol station, a car dealership and a dry cleaner remain shuttered. Community members say they that do not know what Harvard’s intentions are in the area.
Harvard has already helped develop some land to the community’s benefit, including a former concrete plant that is now Allston’s library, said Kevin McCluskey, senior director of community relations at Harvard. Last year, the school pledged to spend more than US$21 million on educational projects and other community benefits over the next 10 years.
‘It’s interesting that these things get left out of the conversation,’ Mr McCluskey said. ‘We’re conscientious participants in the community-wide planning process.’
Harvard disclosed in 1997 that it had been buying land to expand in Allston, and it now owns about 220 acres that it plans to build on over the next 50 years.
The school has holdings on all sides of a low-income housing complex, called Charlesview Apartments, leaving the property ‘like the hole in a doughnut’, said Mr Mattison, the community organiser.
In 2007, a deal was struck to fill in the doughnut. Under the agreement, Harvard pledged to help pay to rebuild Charlesview on the site of a half-empty, school-owned shopping centre in Allston called Brighton Mills.
The school would get the Charlesview land, directly behind Harvard Business School, that would help complete a corridor of property stretching from the new science centre down to the Charles River.
Neighbours have hung banners on the empty Harvard-owned buildings, asking when they will be used again. About a dozen protesters marched on Aug 24 from Charlesview to a meeting across the street from Brighton Mills, carrying signs and chanting: ‘A better plan is what we need, we say no to Harvard’s greed.’
‘Harvard thinks they can do whatever they want and push working class people around,’ said Jake Carman, a resident who organised the protest.
At the meeting of about 100 people, neighbours said that they do not oppose either the swap or the rebuilding of Charlesview’s 213 low-income rental units. Rather, they want Harvard to include more of its land in the project and begin to develop more buildings that lie vacant throughout Allston.
Harvard has already expanded the Charlesview rebuilding site, originally 6.5 acres, by another 1.6 acres to make room for 80 subsidised condominiums and rental units, giving the development more middle-income residents. The project also includes more than 70 units of market-rate housing, overlooking the Charles River.
That will still leave large portions of Harvard’s Allston properties vacant, said Brent Whelan, a member of the Allston community group, at the meeting. Speaking into a microphone, he called on Harvard to tell homeowners when the rest of its empty properties in Allston will be developed.
Missing developer
Harvard owns so much local real estate that few, if any, other opportunities are there for other developers, Mr Whelan said.
‘It’s time to talk about the missing developer in this project,’ he said to applause. Until Harvard is ready to commit to developing more of its land, ‘we’d be fools to believe them’.
Boston’s redevelopment authority is also calling for park and housing construction on the Harvard land, said Jay Rourke, a senior project manager for the agency, who ran the Allston meeting. The authority will hold another hearing on the project on Sept 23 and will take public comment till Oct 13.
Charlesview’s low-income residents said that they are frustrated waiting for Allston homeowners to make peace with Harvard, and some said that the project should not be held up to satisfy neighbourhood demands. The 40-year-old concrete structure is falling apart and beyond repair, they said at the meeting.
‘I’d like to move in my lifetime,’ said Diane Elliot, a Charlesview resident who sat in the front row.
‘I’m totally disappointed in my alma mater,’ said Mr Whelan, a 1973 Harvard College graduate. ‘Harvard had its chance to change its role in the community here, and it looks like they’ve completely blown it.’
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