Residents Assail City Planners

The Cambridge City Planning Board felt the force of local residents’ resentment of Harvard last night, as the board again refused to wholly back demands to cap building heights in their neighborhood.

The board revisited the Riverside neighborhood residents’ re-zoning petition two months after it recommended the City Council enact less drastic changes.

The neighbors’ list of demands—dubbed the Carlson petition after its chief proponent, local filmmaker Cob Carlson—call for primarily residential zoning and serious height restrictions, including a limit of 20 to 24 feet on a controversial, Harvard-owned plot. The University hopes to expand on the 880 Memorial Drive site, which it currently leases to Mahoney’s Garden Center.

In January, the planning board passed on the Carlson plan, recommending instead a flexible height cap that would range from 45 to 85 feet and allowed for construction of student dormitories.

Harvard had originally planned to build an art museum on the plot, a plan which officials say they abandoned because of residents’ discontent.

More recently, Harvard has expressed a desire to build graduate student housing on the space and has objected to both the Carlson and planning board petitions, calling the restrictions “confiscatory.”

The planning board had to re-hear the Carlson petition after the City Council did not act on it within its six month deliberation period.

For three hours, neighbors berated board members, accusing them of failure and even corruption.

“The planning board petition spits on the history of the neighborhood,” Carlson said. Residents said the board was being insensitive to neighborhood concerns, a criticism traditionally reserved for Harvard.

But the University remained a target.

“Harvard College has outgrown itself, trampling the neighborhood that gave it life,” said Bridget Dinsmore, a retired elementary school teacher, and Riverside resident for over 30 years.

Carlson said that given Harvard’s checkered past with neighborhood, it should either leave the Mahoney’s plot untouched or create a park.

“We’ve compromised enough over the years,” Carlson said. “It’s time for the institutions to compromise.”

In a 14-minute presentation—one Riverside resident timed—Harvard also expressed its frustration with the planning board petition, saying that it seriously impeded its ability to develop projects that could prove beneficial to the neighborhood.

“Both [petitions] limit our ability to create housing, and in doing that, limit our ability to create affordable housing,” said Mary H. Power, senior director of community relations. Yet the board ultimately voted almost without comment to resubmit its own petition.

The next step for the petition is a return to the City Council which has traditionally been more receptive to Riverside residents’ concerns and has echoed some of their qualms.

—Staff writer Alexandra N. Atiya can be reached at atiya@fas.harvard.edu.