Neighborhood Faces Expansion

Local resident Kevin Hill has become a familiar face over the past five months as stakeholders gather to plan the future of Harvard’s riverfront land in Cambridge.

Armed with detailed diagrams and colorful posters, Hill has repeatedly demanded to be placed on meeting agendas to register his complaints with Harvard’s proposed development of the Riverside neighborhood and present his 21 alternative designs.

Hill’s time to speak has been kept short as city politicians, neighborhood representatives, and Harvard officials focus on moving ahead with a compromise plan for the University’s construction of faculty and affiliate housing.

And despite Hill’s profanity-laced objections, Harvard’s expansion plans received the unanimous approval of the city Planning Board last December. Construction was set to begin this spring on Harvard’s two Riverside properties—one sandwiched between Leverett and Mather Houses, and the other down Memorial Drive at the former site of Mahoney’s Garden Center.

But Feb. 24, Hill filed an appeal that will delay Harvard’s expansion on the Memorial Drive plot, which sits adjacent to Hill’s home.

“My family has been here between 70 and 50 years,” Hill says. “I’m fighting power and money. Why should they prevail?”

Hill’s last-minute appeal of the construction permit—and the continued debates over architectural designs on Harvard’s other site—reveals a lingering bitterness among residents in a neighborhood whose history is fraught with town-gown tension.

Harvard’s Senior Director of Community Relations Mary H. Power says she hopes to reach a positive resolution so the University and the city can move forward in implementing the compromise development plan, which offers benefits to both sides.

But, she adds, “When things become lawsuits it limits our ability to engage in dialogue.”

GROWING PAINS

The ivory tower began in a cow pasture. From its humble origins, Harvard has grown into the largest land-owner in Cambridge—but its development has caused its share of growing pains.

University officials argue that expansion is vital to Harvard’s success in the twenty-first century. Attracting top-notch faculty and students—particularly in the sciences—depends on maintaining up-to-date laboratories and providing housing. But this is a hard case to make to residents who for over thirty years have watched a seemingly unending advance of Harvard high rises into their neighborhoods.

The bad blood runs especially deep in Riverside, the historically working-class neighborhood where Irish and black families felt they were pushed aside to make room for Mather House and Peabody Terrace.

In 1970, residents protested at Commencement, marching into Harvard Yard and mounting the stage during the ceremony.

More recently, residents harbor resentment about the construction of the DeWolfe Street apartments in the early 1990s, which they say Harvard promised would be faculty, not student, housing.

In addition to tension over Harvard’s expansion, residents complain about the day-to-day problems that arise from living next door to students.

“Students congregate on the streets—you can hear the conversation perfectly,” says Michael Brennan, whose home sits opposite to Leverett House. “These students think I’m a mean guy. I understand they want to have fun, but this is where I live.”

In 2002, Riverside residents frustrated Harvard’s designs to build a museum on its Memorial Drive site.

So when the city and the University signed an agreement in October 2003 that allowed Harvard to develop its remaining Riverside properties, those involved hailed the dawn of a new era.

The agreement, which came after lengthy negotations, enables Harvard to construct 328 housing units of faculty and affiliate housing on its two sites, in exchange for providing 36 units of affordable housing and a public park for city residents.

“I think as a result of that long process we’ll have a stronger relationship going forward,” Power said at the time.

GOING TO COURT

Hill’s appeal means that Harvard will not be able to go forward with the construction on Memorial Drive—or the provision of affordable housing to the neighborhood—until the case is resolved in Middlesex court.

Hill says the current design blocks abutting houses’ views of the river and he wants the University to move the houses to a different location.

In a separate lawsuit in April 2004, Cob Carlson—another Memorial Drive abutter—sought to block the city from granting Harvard an easement to build an underground parking lot as part of the project. The suit was quickly dismissed by a Middlesex Superior Court judge.

Both Hill and Power say they don’t know how long this latest challenge might take to be resolved.

“We’re all still in the birth stage of getting to a new era,” says Lawrence Adkins, president of the Riverside Neighborhood Association, who helped negotiate the agreement and now serves on a committee to oversee its implementation.

Cambridge Mayor Michael A. Sullivan says the appeal should not be considered a sign that town-gown relations have taken a turn for the worse.

“An abutter has the right to file an appeal,” Sullivan says. “That’s a fact of life whether it’s Harvard or a small property developer.”

Construction will still go forward in the area near Mather known as Kerry Corner. But while most residents there are resigned to the current agreement, they still have concerns about the impact Harvard construction will have on their neighborhood.

Traffic, noise, privacy, the destruction of trees, and the obstruction of light top the list. And they remain suspicious of Harvard’s motives when dealing with residents.

Residents who have followed negotiations with Harvard through the years say the University consistently arrives late to meetings and withholds information until the last minute, making it more difficult for the neighborhood to respond effectively to their plans.

“The fundamental problem is that, in spite of mouthing pleasant words, Harvard real estate has never wanted to come to the table as an equal partner with residents,” says Peter Kemble, who lives near Mather House and graduated from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design in 1967. “The premise has always been, ‘It’s Harvard’s land, we’ll do whatever we want and to hell with you.’”

But Power emphasizes that Harvard has acted in good faith during the process, offering benefits targeted to residents’ concerns about preserving affordable housing and open space.

“While it was a very long process and there was a tremendous amount of tension, the city and Harvard came together around this agreement,” she says.

And Paul Grogan, who served as Harvard’s former vice president for Government, Community, and Public Affairs from 1998 to 2001, says he believes Harvard has made a greater effort under University President Lawrence H. Summers to be responsive to community needs.

“I just don’t think you can make the case that the university is running rampant over the interests of the neighborhoods,” Grogan says.

As Hill’s appeal of the Memorial Drive construction works its way through the court system, Harvard officials will continue to meet with residents and city politicians to iron out the disagreements in Kerry Corner. Construction there is still set to begin this spring.

“The dialogue will continue right on until the project’s completion,” says Thomas J. Lucey, Harvard’s director of community relations for Cambridge.

While expansion pits the University’s past against its future, continuing negotiations with residents about the implementation of the agreement offer the University a chance to recast its image.

“This is the test for this generation of Cambridge Riverside development,” says Adkins.

—Joseph M. Tartakoff contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Natalie I. Sherman can be reached at nsherman@fas.harvard.edu.