Expansion: The Growing Pains Harvard Might Suffer

Vociferous Cambridge City Councilor Alfred E. Vellucci recently called Harvard administrators "conspirators behind ivy walls," causing his audience at a September City Council meeting to stand and roar with approval.

Vellucci had just delivered another one of his long, impassioned speeches about the evils of Harvard expansion in Cambridge. This time he said he was incensed over a 1965 land deal between the city and Harvard that allowed the University to obtain public land for the construction of the pedestrian overpass over Broadway.

He charged that the parcel of land allowed Harvard to link the Yard, Memorial Hall and Law School properties and to create a valuable land holding.

Harvard has a flair for making suckers out of city officials, Vellucci continued. "By 1984 Big Brother in this city will be sitting in Massachusetts Hall."

The mere suggestion that Harvard might "expand" never fails to arouse Vellucci's emotions and to provoke the ire of local tenant and neighborhood groups who fear the University will somehow infringe on their privacy. Several prominent Cambridge citizens interviewed recently demanded "greater sensitivity" from University officials who might be considering expansion in the next five to ten years.

City Planning Director Robert A. Bowyer said that he expects Harvard to eventually use all the land and residential properties it now holds.

"It looks inevitable," Bowyer said. "This [view] is based on an extrapolation of more than 50 years of history. If you look at Cambridge in the early 1900s, you'll find only little houses here and there."

The University's Interim Long-Range Plan, issued in June by the University Planning Office and Office of Government and Community Affairs, outlines all potential projects now on the horizon, including possible construction of new undergraduate Houses and living space for graduate and married students.

The Planning Office has circulated copies of the 141-page report throughout the University and to community groups and city officials for comment, with the intent of making revisions based on community feedback this fall.

Already members of the Cambridge Civic Association, a local citizens group, have criticized the report for failing to indicate Harvard's future property purchases and for leaving unclear the extent of the University's commitment to in-lieu-of-tax payments made to the city as compensation for use of city services.

A CCA declaration, expected to be approved at the next board of directors meeting, scores the Harvard report for taking "little account of the urban context in which Harvard exists and of the needs and goals of the surrounding community."

Brett Donham, chairman of CCA's housing and land use committee, said last week, "Harvard hasn't done its homework. It hasn't shown a real need to redraw the boundaries, a need to purchase new land or whether it really has the means to build new dormitories."

City Planning Director Bowyer said undergraduate Houses the University might construct in the vicinity of Mather and Dunster House should be "lower-scale town houses along the lines of Quincy House."

"We don't want more 20-story blockbusters. Mather tower, Leverett House and Peabody Terrace are all strong buildings. Any new Houses in this area should relate more sympathetically with the surrounding residential district," he said.

"The construction of a new dorm in the Mather-Leverett-Peabody area would make people feel like Harvard was almost in their living room," Bowyer said. "Harvard expansion there is not a question of aesthetics. It's a matter of a psychological effect on the Riverside community. People will begin to feel crowded out."

Peter Wasserman, a member of the Harvard Square Business Men's Association board of directors, said last week possible University expansion by 100 to 200 students would cause "no conflict whatsoever." He said he favored Harvard's announced intention to expand housing for faculty, graduate students and married students because "it will take a lot of pressure off the open housing market" and reduce local commuter traffic and parking problems.

Wasserman, whose family has large property holdings in the Square, including The Garage shopping complex, said new graduate student housing "would bring people into a permanent shopping population and would help local businesses."

"I think Harvard's interim plans and policies should help diversify and balance the marketplace," Wasserman said.

Donham of CCA said the need to "diversify the marketplace" is a "weak argument and a poor reason" to accept Harvard's report on possible expansion. "Increases in the size of the student population or in the physical layout of the University will certainly have an impact on the city, but also will create a real danger of making the school itself very impersonal and undesirable as a place to learn," he said.

Planning Director Bowyer said he is not flatly opposed to any Harvard expansion.

"But if Harvard decides to expand by more than 25 per cent, then the city will have to take a hard look at what would happen," Bowyer said. "Harvard has really reached the point where it doesn't have any elbow room left. Any expansion in one sector will be at the expense of another."

So far, Bowyer, Donham and members of local neighborhood groups have been unable to unite on recommendations for what the final draft of the Harvard report should contain. According to persons from several community groups, the present interim report contains no overt clues as to the direction Harvard will take in its future development. Bowyer said he found it difficult to react to a report that contains "many abstractions and an assortment of alternatives."

Bowyer said everyone--and especially Harvard administrators--must be sensitive about the need to control overall growth patterns in the city. "You have to remember that Cambridge already is too overcrowded for its own good."