High Hopes, But Slow Progress

Few long-time Cambridge denizens think Harvard is an ideal neighbor, despite its wealth of resources. But in spite of the confrontation and mistrust that has historically characterized interaction between Harvard and local residents, several new developments this year offered hope for change. New players emerged on both sides with pledges to mend differences and work toward common ground, reinvigorating the promise for cooperation unseen in recent decades. That potential nevertheless remains unrealized today, and instead of reconciliation, the last year has witnessed only more of the same adversarial bickering and mutual frustration between Cambridge and the University.

At his welcoming reception in November, Harvard’s new Vice President of Government, Community and Public Affairs Alan J. Stone offered a new reason for optimism when he assured a crowd of local officials that he would improve Harvard’s transparency, long a major roadblock to earning the community’s trust. January brought more potential for progress, with newly-elected Mayor Michael A. Sullivan vowing to make town-gown relations a major priority of his term. The city council’s creation of the Committee on University Relations that same month represented fruitful effort toward improving communication and making long-term planning and development cooperative rather than confrontational.

But University President Lawrence H. Summers’ silence on town-gown issues during his October installation speech foreshadowed just how little would change. Just one month after Stone’s promise of more transparency, the University announced the secret purchase of a 120-unit housing development in Cambridgeport, even though local activists said they had been struggling with developers to secure the plot for city residents. And in the adjacent neighborhood of Riverside, the University persists in its stubborn refusal to negotiate directly with city residents over plans to build an art museum on Memorial Drive. Although the University has sent officials to community board meetings, those officials are usually from the Office of Community Relations—public relations personnel with little to no power to bargain with neighbors or modify proposals. The University has made few strides toward actually engaging community concerns.

Local residents deserve no less blame for the persistent bad blood as they continue to obstruct Harvard’s projects at every turn, even when the initiatives will cause little harm. In an effort to thwart Harvard’s planned art museum, the Riverside Study Committee recommended rezoning the Mahoney’s site with a prohibitively low height limit of 24 feet on any future construction. An art museum would not be as disruptive as Peabody Terrace, and Riverside residents would serve their own interests best by working with the University to modify existing proposals to address their concerns—including protecting their view of the river and ensuring that local traffic and parking problems do not worsen—while also permitting the University to build a museum tall enough to be functional.

A similar battle between the entrenched foes is occurring in mid-Cambridge. Residents are engaged in a quixotic battle of their own over the planned Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS) tunnel, which would connect CGIS’ two proposed buildings under Cambridge Street. Although construction would generate noise and would create a temporary eyesore, the tunnel would have little impact on the neighborhood upon completion. Traffic on Cambridge Street would move more smoothly, since fewer University staff would cross the street on foot during the day to move between the buildings. And with a tunnel, CGIS would only need one loading dock, not two—benefiting the neighborhood in the long run Rather than work to make the inevitable less intrusive, residents persevere in their five-year struggle to undermine the tunnel.

With a monumental move to Allston looming on the horizon, Harvard-Cambridge relations will only grow more uncertain. As a first step toward reconciliation in the short-term, the University should modify its current building proposals to account for loudly voiced but often unheeded community concerns, and it should ensure that future proposals for new projects are not announced until it has solicited neighborhood input. At the same time, local residents should acknowledge the University’s positive contributions to their community and should look to take advantage of its immense resources in a mutually beneficial relationship. Progress is possible, but it requires both sides to follow through on their promises.