Boston City Councillors Criticize Building Plans Of Harvard, Hospitals

Four Boston City Councillors sharply criticized the buildings plans of Harvard Medical School and the Affiliated Hospitals Center (AHC) at a Council-sponsored hearing in Roxbury last night.

The four members of the Council's Urban Renewal Committee demanded that Harvard and the AHC make available a complete version of their building plans. The Committee has also asked for the details of the relocation housing planned by the University for some of its tenants who will be evicted because of the construction. The plans will be examined at another hearing to be held within the next few weeks.

If Harvard and the hospital complex fail to disclose this information, the City of Boston will deny them the building permits and other legal clearances needed for the construction. Thomas I Atkins, one of the councillors, said after the meeting.

The councillors also blasted the city administration for failing to send representatives to the meeting.

Surprises

The most surprising fact to surface during the three-and-a-half hour session was that there has been practically no contact between the city and Harvard during the last decade of the planning.

Harvard is now anticipating that the $70 million hospital complex will be built on the land now occupied by housing scheduled for demolition beginning January 1973. The hospital is to serve as a teaching facility for medical students.

But the plans for the relocation housing, which Harvard has promised tobuild before it begins to evict, are still in the talking stage among University and tenant negotiators.

Edward S. Gruson, assistant to President Pusey for Community Affairs, came under particularly pointed questioning by Louise Day Hicks, another of the councillors, who asked him whether Harvard would give the tenants a voice in the relocation housing plans.

Gruson replied merely that there would have to be a "consensus" between the University and the tenants in order for the final design to be drawn. To this, Hicks retorted, " I think I can say honestly that everything you have said answers nothing."