Buying the Best Buildings

One Harvard Cooperative Society building is not like all the others. The customers do not go to Harvard or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And some of them park their motorcycles on the street.

You won't find crimson scarves or Veritas running shorts at 1 Bow St.--home of Baskin-Robbins, the Bow and Arrow Pub, an auto school, a recently folded copy shop and a liquidated laundromat.

Acquired in 1954, in the past the building has housed a Coop laundry service and computers for bookkeeping. But officers say it functions mainly as an investment.

In Harvard Square's high-stakes real estate market, physical expansion has been difficult for the Coop. In addition to its original building, the Mass. Ave. store sells books in a large annex and women's clothing in an adjacent storefront.

The print department also occupies rented space on the second floor of the Harvard-owned Oxford Ale House building, above The Border Cafe.

According to Coop stockholder and Lowell House Master William H. Bossert '59, successive directors have eyed that building hungrily. But despite the Coop's close ties to Harvard, the University is not selling.

Yet store directors say the need for space does not mean the Coop will expand into I Bow St. "It's a very good investment," Cromwell Professor of Law Emeritus Louis Loss, the Coop's vice president and general counsel says of the building, but he adds that it is likely to remain just that. He says the property is too close to the main store to house a satellite, and there would be little point in moving selected sales departments three blocks down Mass. Ave.

"There's nothing anomalous about renting out a building," says Loss.

Even if the Coop will not be opening up shop on Bow St., there is reason to believe the corner is due for a construction project. With its crumbling concrete eaves, noisy bar and dusty windows, the building may add character to the Square--but not the sort which chambers of commerce appreciate. And since the assessed value of the two-story structure is less than half that of the land under it--about $1 million as compared to $2.5 million--the Coop could improve its investment with a larger building.

However, nobody seems likely to build in the near future. Barry Bornstein, owner of the Bow and Arrow, and the manager at Baskin-Robbins both say the copy store and laundromat left for financial reasons that had nothing to do with Coop plans for expansion. And they add that their own leases are for an indefinite period. Says the Baskin-Robbins manager, "We're going to be here for a good while."