City Urged to Acquire MTA Yards To Prevent Land-Grab by Harvard

A member of the Cambridge City Council yesterday urged that the city act to acquire the Bennett St. MTA Yards under the Urban Renewal Act because "there is now nothing to prevent Harvard University from grabbing all the land for educational purposes."

Councillor Daniel J. Hayes, in calling for the City Manager "to acquire the land for development or sale for tax purposes," admitted that "Harvard has a right to develop some of the land for dormitory facilities" but claimed that the present plan to use six acres for educational and six acres for commercial purposes "does not offer enough tax potential to the city."

"In good will to the city of Cambridge," Hayes asserted, "Harvard should develop at least nine acres of the land for commercial purposes and should use the entire river-front for high-rise luxury apartments." Tentative University plans call for the construction of a new House on half of the river-front property.

"It is time Harvard showed good faith in developing land in the best interest of Cambridge," Hayes asserted, warning that "Cambridge is the city in which Harvard is located, not merely the city which surrounds Harvard." He claimed that more of the money "being poured into Harvard by the Federal government should be applied to Cambridge development."

Both Councillors G. d'Andelot Belin and Joseph A. DeGuglielmo '22 questioned the wording and feasibility of the motion, and DeGuglielmo eventually exercised his Charter Privilege to postpone a vote on it until next week.

Although Belin expressed a willingness "to recommend giving the proposal to the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority to study," he warned that the Council "should not prejudge the matter" by wording its resolution to include only development or sale for tax purposes. "Harvard is one of our most important and most productive citizens," Belin asserted.

The legal technicalities involved in Hayes' proposal were made evident by University spokesmen, who refused to comment on the bill until they are able to consult University lawyers.

Hayes said that he hopes the Redevelopment Authority will declare the MTA Yards an Open Blighted Area, but admitted that such a ruling, the only one under which Cambridge could legally acquire the land, "may not be possible to obtain."

Hayes expects to get the land using basically the same procedure that Boston used when its Redevelopment Authority took over from the Boston and Albany Railroad the land on which the Prudential Insurance Center is now being constructed. He claimed that the Bennett St. Yards "are the most valuable undeveloped land in Cambridge and could become Cambridge's Prudential Center."