Cliffe Council Postpones Quad Garage

Radcliffe Council voted to postpone construction of the underground garage at Radcliffe for at least one year.

Radcliffe President Mary I. Bunting said Monday that changes in Radcliffe building plans and a desire to withhold the $750,000 investment necessary for the garage were the deciding factors.

"We hated to sink this much money into a garage at this stage of the game," Mrs. Bunting said. "If the merger comes it may be more essential to put money into women's education or somewhere else," she said.

The garage, proposed to the Council last September and approved by them in November, was originally envisioned as part of a large building plan in the quadrangle. It was to accompany the renovation of Bertram and Eliot Halls and construction of a kitchen and dining hall between the two dormitories.

Plans Changed

A change in the size of the kitchen, however, meant that the entrance route for the garage--scheduled to lead from Shepard Street through the space between Bertram and Eliot--was no longer feasible.

The two operations--the renovation and the garage construction--were no longer dependent on one another and were separated, Mrs. Bunting said. The dormitory renovations will continue as scheduled, she added.

The garage would have been constructed beneath the Radcliffe quad for 200 cars. The initial investment was to come from Radcliffe's present $30 million fund drive. Money for maintaining the lot would have come from the parking space rental fees.

Some of the spaces in the lot would have been rented on a semester basis and others would have been available for transient parking.

The garage had been proposed to alleviate the parking problem around Radcliffe. Mrs. Bunting said last October that Radcliffe faces the alternative of building a lot or "ringing all the Cambridge streets with cars."