Community Groups Tackle Zoning, Licensing Issues

The name "Harvard Square" evokes some very disparate images--from preppy clothing stores and quaint bookshops to subway construction and new wave youth. In an effort to preserve the former while eliminating the latter, Cambridge residents have banded together in two community groups to guarantee their opinions are heard.

Their success in recent months has been notable. The Harvard Square Defense Fund has led a highly-publicized fight to limit the number of bars and restaurants in the Square, and the Neighborhood 10 Association joined with the defense fund to fight the granting of special zoning permits for a large video game arcade hoping to move into The Garage shopping plaza.

"Our primary concern is to maintain the quality of life in the Square," says Defense Fund President Gladys P. Gifford, adding that her group's fight is to maintain a diverse mix of shops and restaurants. The way the defense fund plans to achieve this end is to continue to warrantor the acitivities of the city's zoning and licensing commissions.

Thomas W. Anninger, president of Neighborhood 10, agrees with Gifford's characterization of increasing lack of variety in Square businesses, adding that the effects may eventually be felt throughout his neighborhood, which stretches from the Square to Fresh Pond.

Unlike the defense fund, Neighborhood 10 did not rise specifically from a Square-related fight. The association was formed in the 1950s when the city's Community Development Department broke into 10 "neighborhood" units and city officials urged residents to form community action groups.

Starting with their opposition to plans to widen Memorial Drive by chopping down its stately sycamore trees, the neighborhood's residents had their greatest success in opposing plans to build the John F. Kennedy '40 Library on a site Kennedy himself had selected near the Kennedy School of Government--plans that were strongly backed by then-City Councillor Alfred E. Vellucci.

The defense fund grew out of the fight over the use of Parcel lb, a large, undeveloped plot located behind the K-School.

"That issue was so big, it needed a group to focus exclusively on it," says Anninger.

Both groups vocally protested the original plans to build a massive retail and hotel complex on Parcel lb. The developer subsequently agreed to change his plans, and work on the site began earlier this year.

Since then, the defense fund has tried to find ways to maintain what is left of the Square of 10 years ago--the small shops and specialty stores that have recently given way to ice cream stores and pizza parlors.

The recent fight over liquor licenses for Grendel's Den and Ruggles Pizza are an example. "We've been working closely with the licensing commission to formulate a policy," explains Gifford.

Anninger says the two groups function well as a team, but adds, "I'm happy to let them focus on issues I don't feel comfortable with." The liquor license issue was controversial within the Neighborhood 10 group, and consequently they did not take a stand, he explains.

"We are a small, co-opted group not elected officials, and we have to select issues on which there is a general consensus," he explains.

An example of the two group's converging interests was their joint effort to alter the Coolidge Bank's original plans for a large new complex at the bank's current Mt. Auburn St. location.