Environmental Study to Delay Construction of JFK Library

Construction of the proposed Kennedy Memorial Library will be delayed at least five months while a Federal study of the project's environmental impact is made.

Demolition of the buildings on the proposed site--the Bennett St. MBTA yards--cannot begin until the site has been approved by the Federal government according to guidelines issued by the Council on Environmental Quality.

Groundbreaking ceremonies, which had been scheduled for May 29, 1974, the 57th anniversary of the late President's birth, consequently will have to be pushed back several months.

Demolition of the buildings on the eastern half of the yards was scheduled to begin next January, after the MBTA had vacated that sector.

The delay makes it unlikely that the Library will be completed in time for the nation's bicentennial, as Library officials had originally hoped.

The Federal government's decision to require an environmental impact statement on the Library proposal was not made until last June, after Library officials had announced the projected dates for the groundbreaking and completion.

It had been questionable until that time whether the Federal statutes applied to the project because a private organization, the Kennedy Corporation, is building the Library. Because the facility will be turned over to the General Services Administration, (GSA) upon completion, however, the statutes were applied. The GSA provides maintenance for government properties.

Actual research for the impact statement will not begin until late November or December, after a consulting firm has been contracted by the GSA. Before a contractor can be chosen, a "scope of work"--or request for proposal--statement must be drawn up to submit to potential firms.

The draft of this statement, submitted to the City of Cambridge recently by Robert T. Griffen, special assistant to the administrator of GSA and an acquaintance of the late President Kennedy, is presently under review by the City government and members of the community.

The Harvard Square Development Task Force will hold a public hearing next Wednesday to discuss the GSA's preliminary statement.

"We are reviewing the scope of work to see that it is touching all of the factors we think it should touch," City Planner Robert Boyer said yesterday.

He said he felt the environmental impact statement should assess the total potential impact of the Kennedy Library on Harvard Square, including the impact on the business district. "For example, is everyone going to start selling rocking chairs and little torpedo boats?" he asked. Boyer said he also wants the report to ask if Harvard Square can "stand the high level of transiency that would result from the tourists."

"The people who live here and work here daily are afraid that they'd be lost in their own community," he said.

The draft of the scope of work statement includes studies of the socioeconomic environment as well as the natural environment. Griffen said yesterday that the impact statement will be more comprehensive than most because the Library proposal has become such a sensitive community issue