$500K To Refurbish Allston Community

Harvard and the Boston Redevelopment Authority launched the Harvard Allston Partnership Fund on Monday, which will provide $500,000 in grants over the next five years for community improvement proposals submitted by neighborhood non-profit groups.

The Fund, which aims to foster neighborhood improvement, cultural enrichment, and educational programs in Allston, is part of the Allston Science Complex Cooperation Agreement. The agreement, signed in April of last year, stipulated that Harvard provide $25 million worth of community benefits to the neighborhood in order to proceed with construction of the complex.

Kevin A. McCluskey ’76, Harvard’s director of community relations for Boston, said that the University looks forward to adding “this very positive element of our relationship to the work that we do with the neighborhood and the city.” He said he hopes the Fund will “seed some very good ideas” while strengthening existing community projects.

According to Michael F. Glavin, the BRA’s deputy director for institutional development, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino appointed a seven-member advisory committee to review and recommend proposals for BRA approval. The committee, which includes three members of the Harvard Allston Task Force, will be accepting grant proposals for the upcoming year through April 30.

“The mayor wanted to have other faces, other names, and other perspectives,” Glavin said, explaining why the fund is not simply governed by the Task Force.

The program aims to distribute $100,000 each year for the next five years in grants ranging in size from $100 to $25,000. Unused money from each year will be remain in the Fund for distribution in subsequent years.

“I’m hoping the partnership fund will reach down into levels where people don’t have that much organization, but still provide valuable services to the community and are in need of some funding help,” said Paul Berkeley, a member of both the committee and Task Force.

The Fund’s inauguration may help to reassure community members that Harvard is following through on neighborhood obligations attached to the Science Complex project, despite Harvard’s announcement in February that it would be slowing construction of the complex due to the unprecedented decline in the school’s endowment.

But Jake Carman, founder of the Allston Brighton Neighborhood Assembly, which aims to support low-income and working class interests in Allston, emphasized that his group is “opposed to community benefits as an appeasement and a replacement of having direct neighborhood participation [in the planning process].”

Glavin said he is open to the idea of petitioning Harvard to extend funding beyond the current five-year period, depending on whether the program is “responding well [to] local needs.”

—Staff writer Vidya B. Viswanathan can be reached at viswanat@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Peter F. Zhu can be reached at pzhu@fas.harvard.edu.