City Okays Summer Rd. Plans

Harvard won a two-year battle with tenants in a Summer Rd. apartment building last night when the city's rent control board voted to permit the University to convert the homes into office space for the Graduate School of Design.

University lawyers will probably file notices of eviction "as soon as possible," Sally Zeckhauser, president Harvard Real Estate, said last night. Zeckhauser added that she expected the tenants would be out of the four-story brick building at 7 Summer Rd. by the beginning of February.

A lawyer for the tenants, Saul Schapiro, said last night his clients have not decided whether to appeal the ruling. The three tenants remaining in the apartment house were unavailable for comment last night.

The rent control board voted unanimously to grant Harvard the permits necessary under a statute designed to protect the city's house stock after University lawyers argued that Harvard had created new low and moderate income in housing in areas surrounding the campus in recent years.

But city tenant rights advocates said they were shocked by the decision. "How many people has Harvard kicked out of the Riverside neighborhood over the years?" Frances Segal, a member of the Cambridge Council of Elders, demanded angrily after the ruling.

City Councilor David Sullivan, who drafted the ordinance requiring a city permit before rent-controlled housing is removed from the market, termed the decision a "travesty," and added that "the city manager has to consider very carefully now what his obligations are in regard to carrying out the removal ordinance."

City Manager James L. Sullivan appoints the members of the rent control board. He was unavailable for comment last night.

"This is a serious setback for the community," David Sullivan added. "The Summer Rd. case has become a symbol of neighborhood attempts to resist Harvard's expansion," he said.

Harvard officials termed the decision--in which members cited the University's donation of land at the corner of River and Howard streets for a housing project--a "vindication" of their dealings with Cambridge residents in recent years.

"I am glad they recognized what Harvard has done over the years," Zeckhauser said. "We're very pleased that the board viewed the law and the facts as we did," Louis Armistead, assistant to the vice president for government and community relations, said after the ruling.

Harvard first sent eviction notices to tenants of the 16-unit apartment house in early January of 1979. Residents of the building won the right to stay for at least a few more months during the spring of 1979 after the board ruled that several had valid leases.

In the meantime, the Cambridge City Council passed Sullivan's removal ordinance, designed primarily to slow the rate of condominium conversions in the city. Harvard then applied for removal permits under the statute.

Its lawyers contended in a long series of briefs and memoranda that the University had increased the city's rental housing stock over the last decade by purchasing properties that would otherwise have been converted to condominiums, and by donating land and money for the construction of low and moderate income housing projects.

"Even employing the math of the hearing officer, Harvard has saved twice as many units as have been removed," R.K. Gad II, a University attorney, told the board last night.

The hearing examiner, Margaret Turner, had recommended that the permits be denied, arguing that Harvard had created very little new housing and that what apartments had been created were not comparable to the units at 7 Summer Rd.

No Limit

But board member Fred Cohn said he was "convinced Harvard has made a bona fide effort to help the city of Cambridge with its housing shortage." He added that the University ought to be awarded the permits because "private higher education is the principal export industry of New England," and that institutions like Harvard had helped the region weather the recent recession.

Another board member, Victoria Judson, said she favor granting at least seven of the ten permits in return for the River-Harvard St. land. "I want to set up a system where we are encouraging them to build low and moderate income housing," she said.

If Harvard comes back to the board seeking similar permits for other buildings, members "will be looking for control and condominium legislation."

Sullivan, the only tenant on the city council, added, "The board's mission is not to be evenhanded. It must decide cases fairly, but its mission is to protect tenants."

Rent board members were unavailable for comment yesterday, but some have said in the past they view the body as more of an impartial, quasi-judicial agency designed more to decide cases brought before it than to actively protect tenants.

Those who would change the "mission" of the board would probably first have to change its membership, observers said yesterday. And for some, like Sullivan, that job could be difficult, since the city charter prohibits elected officials from discussing appointments with the city manager.

But whatever changes are made, they will come too late to help the tenants at 7 Sumner Rd. Several tenant lawyers said privately yesterday they thought it unlikely that the two remaining occupants could win a temporary restraining order allowing them to stay if they appealed the case