Budgeting a Building

Sidney R. Knafel ’52 thought he was giving a lot when he gave $15 million to fund a new Harvard center.

His gift went toward a project still known around Cambridge as the Knafel Center.

But Knafel’s name was taken off Harvard’s planned Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS) a year ago, even after he donated another $11 million, when University officials found that the project’s budget had more than tripled and realized they needed to raise millions more to pay for it.

By only giving Knafel’s name to one of the center’s two main buildings, the naming rights of the other building were freed to entice another philanthropist.

The center is the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ most visible and important building project. If and when it is constructed, it will hold all members of the Government department as well as the Faculty from most of Harvard’s centers for international study.

It is also one of FAS’ most time-consuming projects. It has already caused four years of arguments, as Harvard and Cambridge residents went back and forth over the location and design of the center’s two main buildings slated for construction on Cambridge Street.

Now, the center seems to be nearing reality, with Harvard seeking to overcome what will be the final obstacle to the center’s construction: a permit from the city to tunnel under Cambridge Street and connect the center’s two buildings with an underground passageway.

Overshadowed by the extensive redesigns, though, an equally complicated process has been taking place within Harvard. The center’s budget swelled as the project shifted its location and shape, finally settling at a point three times the size of the first estimates.

Over five years, the Center for Government and International Studies went from being a $30 million project to a $100 million enterprise, leaving University fundraisers struggling to follow. Now, armed with about a third of the money and what they hope is a reasonable estimate of the pricetag, the University’s fundraisers search to make up the difference.

Big Bucks

The initial plan for CGIS would have looked something like the Barker Center, which brought together Faculty in 12 humanities departments and consisted mainly of renovating the Harvard Union at a cost of $25 million.

Under the original blueprint, Coolidge Hall would have been completely renovated and a new building would have been erected on part of the park behind the Graduate School of Design’s Gund Hall. An underground passageway across the park would have connected the two.

Until about three years ago, when the original plan was scrapped, the price tag for CGIS was cited at $30 million. But from the very beginning, officials should have known the cost would be far greater, says David A. Zewinski ’76, associate dean of the Faculty for physical resources and planning.

“The $30 million was woefully inadequate,” Zewinski says. “It probably should have been doubled from the start.”

He says that the initial estimate of the center’s cost—which had been the basis for naming CGIS after Sidney Knafel—was a vague “placeholder” approximation of how much the new building would cost.

The estimate was derived from an architect’s rough and ready “cartoon” drawing of the proposed new center that was sent out to potential donors along with the estimated $30 million figure in an effort to jump-start donations.

More important, Zewinski says, that figure failed to include the cost of renovating Coolidge Hall—which architects later said would have cost 80 percent as much as constructing a new building.

“It was not a budget,” he says. “There was a lot of shadowboxing on this. That was really an administrator trying to start the project.”

Since the initial plan, the University completely rethought CGIS—twice.

First, the project architect concluded renovating Coolige Hall, a former hotel with low ceilings and outdated elevators, would be nearly as expensive as constructing a new building. Besides, Cambridge residents were strongly set against the University eating up the little remaining park area behind Gund Hall.

So in October 1998, the University unveiled a new plan. Coolidge Hall would be razed, along with another Harvard building across the street that houses University Information Systems. In their place, two major new buildings—connected by a costly tunnel under Cambridge Street—would form the heart of CGIS. Four historic houses nearby would be renovated for use as Harvard research centers, and one of them the University had to buy and would have to relocate several blocks away at a cost of about $1 million.

After Cambridge residents blasted the buildings’ appearances at a series of community meetings, the University sent the architect back to the drawing board and, within 60 hours, returned with a completely redesigned plan, replacing the boxy facades with sweeping arcs of glass windows. Harvard also agreed to reduce the buildings’ height and set them farther back from the street.

New construction in the tight spaces close to campus is more expensive, Zewinski says, because more must be built underground—including the tunnel under Cambridge Street and a loading dock.

“Sites are so few and far between that when you get an opportunity like CGIS represents…you’re willing to pay a premium for that,” he says.

But this premium is incredibly high.

The shifts and redesigns raised the cost of CGIS to over $100 million. For nearly a decade now, Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles has wanted a government and international studies center to be one of his major projects as dean.

But Zewinski says Knowles stayed strict on the budget question.

For Knowles, signing off on the more ambitious and expensive CGIS meant the Faculty will have to borrow more money for the project and pay interest on the debt out of unrestricted Faculty funds.

“[It is] a sign of the Dean’s commitment,” says John Gerry, assistant dean of the Faculty.

The Name Game

Removing Knafel’s name from the center was a calculated move to raise the missing funds.

Naming rights are typically offered up to potential donors like carrots on sticks.

And the University is currently looking for a donation in the “$30 million range” for that building, says development office spokesperson Andy Tiedemann.

Knafel says he could have dug in his heels and insisted on keeping his name over the entire center, but after “forthright” talks with University fundraisers he agreed to the naming change.

“Calling two buildings ‘Knafel Center’ satisfies a crying ego need I apparently have,” Knafel says. “But I figured I could overcome that and free up a building for some guy who’s got to come along and shell out a couple of bucks.”

“There are too many things Harvard has to do,” he adds. “One thing they shouldn’t have to do is battle with their supporters.”

Knafel remains CGIS’ lead backer and deserves an “enormous amount of credit” for getting the project off the ground, Tiedemann says.

The University is also looking for more donations and, in the process, will be naming other rooms in the center.

CGIS has 35 “naming opporunities,” as development officials refer to naming rights, including rooms, centers and even a garden. So far, Tiedemann says, the University has filled five of the slots—for a total of $9.5 million. But fundraisers hope to raise the full cost of CGIS by the time the University hopes it will be dedicated in late 2004 or early 2005.

Fundraisers are looking for a $3 million donation for the naming of the Harvard-MIT Data Center, which distributes social science data sets to researchers; a $1 million donation for a 125-seat amphitheater; and $1 million for the center’s library reading area. Other seminar and meeting rooms will be named for $100,000 to $1 million gifts, depending on their size and prominence.

As for the project’s original donor, Tiedemann says the prominence of Knafel’s name has stayed roughly the same.

“Sid was financing one new building” under the initial plan, Tiedemann says. “Now he is funding one new building.”

“Sid” Knafel is a venture capital investor, whose investments range from cable television to cellular telephones, biotechnology, and computer software.

International research is not an intellectual passion of his, Knafel says. But for a time he chaired the Overseer’s Visiting Committee to the Center for International Affairs, a position that put him in contact with the Faculty who use Coolidge Hall and who will use CGIS.

As the University kicked off its $2.1 billion capital campaign, Knafel says he looked for ways of jump-starting a major project.

“I knew that this effort for the government department and the international research centers hadn’t started,” he says. “There was no one, no motion.”

Later, as the project’s cost rose, Knafel shifted another $5 million donation to Harvard over to the Knafel Center fund. He increased his donation a second time in the hopes of giving momentum to the fundraising effort for the center and inspiring other seven- and eight-figure gifts.

Designing the center has taken longer than Knafel thought it would. But he says the University is better off for the changes that Cobb recommended and Cambridge residents insisted on.

“I have patience here,” he says. “This building’s going to be there for a couple of hundred years, so you can sacrifice a couple of years.”

—Staff writer Andrew S. Holbrook can be reached at holbr@fas.harvard.edu.