Local Residents Criticize Kennedy Memorial Library

A suspicious and sometimes hostile audience of about 75 people criticized plans for the Kennedy Memorial Library at a public meeting held last night in the Martin Luther King School.

Most of the criticism was directed at Robert Burke, a representative of the Library Corporation, who was present to discuss the relatively narrow subject of alternative options for use of the related facilities area.

In addition, Oliver Brooks, chairman of the Harvard Square Development Task Force which sponsored the meeting, announced that the Task Force has strong objections to the General Services Administration's (GSA) preliminary "scope of work" statement for the required Federal environmental impact study.

Brooks called the statement "fraught with biases and fraught with assumptions," and said his group will send a detailed response to Robert T. Griffen, special assistant to the administrator of GSA, who is supervising the development of the study.

Burke had barely begun his narrative history of plans for the related facilities area when he was interrupted by City Councillor Saundra Graham, a resident of the Riverside community.

Graham first apologized for the small turnout from her neighborhood, attributing it to a wake following a shooting death. She then called Burke's discussion of the related facilities area "premature," because "I don't think the community has even decided whether they want a Library."

"All they're worried about is their homes," Graham said. "Will Riverside be turned into a parking lot? Will real estate prices escalate? We have already been dumped on by Harvard University and we don't intend to be dumped on by the Kennedy Library."

Graham demanded that Burke and other Library Corporation officials schedule another meeting for the Riverside community. Brooks, acting as moderator, told Graham that he had been assured by GSA representatives that the environmental impact study would consume at least nine months and that "no positive steps in terms of building the development can go forward until then."

Burke then resumed his explanation of the related facilities area, saying that its five main purposes are to contain visitors to the site, to enhance the Library both structurally and aesthetically, to bring life to the site on an 18-hour basis, to provide funding for Library programs, and to serve as a source of tax revenue for the City.

He concluded by outlining the third and most recent proposal for the related facilities area, which includes a 300-400 room hotel-motel with spaces above and below ground for 700-950 cars, and 25,000 to 40,000 square feet of retail space.

Burke was asked if the museum and archives, located in the so-called "man-dated portion," are necessarily interrelated. He replied that according to his interpretation of the 1948 Presidential Archives Repository Act, they are interrelated, and that any separation of those two facilities would require a Congressional amendment.

This answer was immediately challenged by several members of the crowd, including Philip Burling, a lawyer and chairman of the Cambridge Civic Association's committee on the Kennedy Library. Burling said that his understanding of the Act was that a museum could be added to the archives, but was by no means essential.

Alan L. Lefkowitz, chairman of the City's Rent Control Board, asked Burke why the 1966 figure of $14 per square foot used by the Library Corporation to determine the taxable land value of the site had not been updated to the present figure of $50 to $60 per square foot.

When Burke said quietly that a great many things have changed in value since 1966, Lefkowitz retorted, "Do you buy your food at a store that has 1966 prices?