Agassiz Will Continue Harvard Land Negotiations

In their final meeting before breaking for the summer, residents of the Agassiz neighborhood voted 29-0 to continue supporting negotiations with the University over Harvard’s major development plans for the area—negotiations which both sides hope to wrap up by the fall.

The neighborhood is home to the science laboratories of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) as well as Harvard Law School—two schools facing major space crunches—and Harvard officials estimate that about 1.5 million square feet of new buildings are in the works.

William Bloomstein, chair of ACID—the Agassiz Committee on the Impacts of Development—told residents that the negotiators were making progress on a “multi-million dollar package” of benefits for the neighborhood.

“We’re not at a point where we have anything to announce,” he said. “I think it’s a good package. There’s a lot of details to be worked out.”

Bloomstein is one of four ACID members who have been meeting with Vice President of Government, Community and Public Affairs Alan J. Stone and other top University officials to hash out an agreement.

Bloomstein said the negotiation’s “biggest sticking point” has been over the neighborhood’s push to get a clear commitment on the upper limit of Harvard’s development designs on Agassiz.

According to representatives of both sides, Harvard officials have said that the approximately 1.5 million planned square feet represents the upper limit on the University’s growth for the next 25 years.

“We have discussed conceptually the notion that this one-and-a-half million square feet of development represents the completion of the North campus,” said Harvard’s Senior Director of Community Relations Mary H. Power. “We expect it will take approximately 20 to 25 years to complete that development.”

In addition to pushing for a longer guarantee, Bloomstein said the ACID negotiators hope to receive money to fund neighborhood programs and promises from Harvard to limit the impacts of construction on the area, among other items.

While voting to support these negotiating points, the residents added a new requirement that the Agassiz Neighborhood Council (ANC) must have one month to discuss any agreement before the representatives sign on to it.

Power said the University would accommodate this request.

Residents also voted on one more point for the negotiating table, asking the University to bring every building project before the neighborhood for a full review of concerns about truck loading, noise and other quality-of-life issues.

“Harvard will be working with the neighborhood representatives to find ways to address those impact concerns,” Power said.

At the meeting, University officials presented plans for a new 135,000-square foot science facility, the Laboratory for Interface Science and Engineering (LISE).

After asking Harvard officials to leave, some neighbors said they were surprised at how far along plans for LISE were and said they hope to have more input earlier in the process on the University’s future projects.

Harvard officials envision LISE as a center for collaborative research within the different science departments. The design includes an underground “clean room” with specially filtered air.

The above-ground part of the building will be located next to McKay, raised above the courtyard to allow pedestrians to travel on the paths behind the Science Center.

“If we succeed, this courtyard will be better,” said Rafael Moneo, the architect for the project.

Professor of Physics Charles M. Marcus told the ANC members the building was part of an ongoing trend to break down the divisions between different science disciplines.

“The project we are undertaking is a response to the change in the way science is done in general,” he said.

State Representative Alice K. Wolf said afterwards that the emphasis on the building’s scientific benefits represented a change from previous Harvard presentations of building projects, which she said have often focused on physical aspects of construction.

“I think it’s interesting that Harvard is trying to push the basic good of the activity,” she said. “In this neighborhood this has some currency.”

LISE is the second of four major new buildings the FAS science departments are planning to construct in the North Yard, totalling about 500,000 square feet altogether.

In April, the ANC voted to support the first new building, the Biological Research Infrastructure—an underground facility containing 16,000 cages for laboratory mice which many Agassiz residents initially opposed.

In addition to the 500,000 square feet of already-planned buildings, science planners estimate that a second phase of construction will entail roughly another 500,000 square feet.

Meanwhile, HLS has begun a feasibility study to look at possible locations for new buildings.

Power said that the combined total of planned growth by FAS, the Law School and the Harvard Divinity School is about 1.5 million total square feet of construction—in all, about 1.1 million additional square feet in new building, after some existing buildings are torn down.

The University will make a presentation on the LISE to Cambridge’s Planning Board next month.

In the fall, Harvard representatives will again bring the project before the ANC before beginning the process of acquiring the necessary city permits. Power said the University would like to begin construction in early 2004.

—Staff writer Jessica R. Rubin-Wills can be reached at rubinwil@fas.harvard.edu.