City Committee Focuses on Development

Following last month’s summit between Harvard, MIT and the city of Cambridge, city councillors organized their concerns with the universities into four “clusters of work” on Wednesday. Taxation, education, affordable housing and future development will be the major areas of focus for the city’s new university relations committee, which was formed earlier this year.

In the past, immediate concerns such as Harvard’s proposed tunnel under Cambridge Street have taken precedence on the city’s agenda with universities, and taken attention away from broader long-term issues.

Councillors said university development and growth—what councillor Henrietta Davis called the “manifest destiny of the campus”—would be a major priority for the committee.

“It’s impossible to talk about education or housing or employment with these universities when there’s a hot development issue, and there’s always a hot development issue,” said councillor Anthony D. Galluccio.

Having more information earlier about university development is necessary for the city to have a role in university-city relations, Deputy City Manager Richard C. Rossi said.

“We need to know more and [universities] need to know that if they tell us more, we’re not going to do something spiteful just because it’s them doing it,” he said.

But Decker said she doubted that university relations will ever reach a point at which Harvard and MIT disclose their development plans.

“I don’t expect that of them,” she said.

Councillor David P. Maher, who chairs the committee, also noted that the committee has no legal grounds to prevent the universities from buying property.

Several councillors said the committee needed more specific demands than broad areas of interest such as education and housing.

“We don’t know where we’re going,” said councillor E. Denise Simmons. “We can say affordable housing, but where are we going to get it? Does the university have it?”

Simmons said she was frustrated at Harvard’s decentralized structure in which each school has its own governance and its own agenda.

“We think of them as an octopus. We’re talking to the head, but the tentacles are all out there doing things,” she said.

The structure and process for the university-city relations committee is still in development, with some councillors continuing to state their reservations with the current committee process.

“I think we’re trying to play both facilitator and representatives of the people,” said councillor Marjorie C. Decker. “They’re not always compatible.”

Decker said she was concerned that the council would “lose some fire” in its message if the process required that they engage in polite meetings with universities.

“I don’t want us to just be reacting to them and what their version is. I want us to have our own vision and have them react to us,” Decker said.

—Staff writer Stephanie M. Skier can be reached at skier@fas.harvard.edu.