Harvard Donates Land to City as Part of Benefits Package

Harvard will donate a 0.7-acre parcel of land in Allston to the City of Boston as part of a community benefits package attached to the University’s 10-year Institutional Master Plan for development in Allston. The site, located on 90 Antwerp Street and currently home to an abandoned Brookline Machine warehouse, is worth an estimated $2 million, according to Harvard officials.

The University stated their decision to donate the Brookline Machines site after a request by the Harvard-Allston Task Force to include more funding to promote housing in the neighborhood as part of the community benefits package.

Kevin Casey, the University’s acting vice president for public affairs and communications, said in a task force meeting this week that Harvard hopes the site will be used for the creation of home-ownership housing, but that the City of Boston and the Allston community will determine the ultimate use of the site.

Melina A. Schuler, a spokeswoman for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, said that “the neighborhood wants to see multi-family middle-income housing” on the site.

Many task force members expressed their support for building housing on the site of the abandoned warehouse.

However, task force member Tim McHale said that some of the Brookline site’s neighbors have requested that it be converted into a park.

“To create open space is really key,” McHale said.

“If it goes to housing, it can never be anything else.”

Some members of the task force said that building housing on the Brookline Machines site will help to ensure that any fees Harvard pays to the City of Boston are used for the benefit of the Allston community.

As a result of the size of its construction plans, Harvard is required by the City of Boston to pay $11 million in fees for the IMP. This money can be used to support housing and workforce development throughout the city, but members of the task force and the community, as well as representatives from Harvard, have expressed the desire to see those funds funneled back into the Allston community.

Harvard purchased the Brookline Machines site at the request of the community in 2009 during the planning process for the University-constructed New Charlesview apartment complex.

The Brookline Machines site abuts the Charlesview complex, and, according to McHale, the neighborhood “didn’t want a warehouse in the middle of residential housing.”

At that time, Harvard agreed to work with developers to place at least ten units of home-ownership housing on the site to balance over 200 units of rental apartments that constitute New Charlesview.

However, facing difficulty securing financing for the project, and in the face of disagreement among the community over the best use of the land, the City of Boston asked Harvard not to go through with developing the Brookline Machines site.

McHale said he was not surprised by the University’s decision to give away the land.

“It was a no-brainer,” McHale said. “Harvard purchased a lot of land [that] doesn’t serve their institutional needs, so they ended up swapping…community benefits for land.”

McHale said that, at the end of a long debate over the IMP and community benefits, he is excited to begin working with Harvard on actual projects.

“We can take things off paper and put them in the ground,” he said.

“I think there’s an honesty and partnership that’s evolving, and it’s moving in the right direction. We’re turning a corner.”

— Staff writer Marco J. Barber Grossi can be reached at mbarbergrossi@thecrimson.com. Follow him @marco_jbg.