Harvard’s 10-Year Plan for Allston Moves Forward with $53 Million Investment in Community Benefits

Harvard committed to spending nearly $53 million on community benefits for the Allston-Brighton neighborhood as a part of its Institutional Master Plan — increasing its prior community benefits program by $25 million.

The Boston Planning & Department Agency approved Harvard’s Institutional Master Plan on Thursday, ending a 14-month period of public comment and negotiations regarding the next ten years of Harvard’s development into the neighborhood.

The BPDA unanimously approved the IMP after a number of community leaders — including members of the Harvard Allston Task Force, the Allston Civic Association, and the North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters — publicly voiced their support for the 10-year plan during the meeting.

In interviews with The Crimson, leaders described this IMP as a scaled-back construction plan compared to many of Harvard’s in years past, priming the neighborhood for longer-term projects like the Enterprise Research Campus and the development of Beacon Park Yard.

The IMP will carry over three projects from its previous version — an administrative building for Harvard Business School, a renovation of Harvard Stadium, and the Gateway Project, a mixed-use retail and academic building — while introducing three minor new buildings. These will include a renovation of a vacant kitchen at 168 Western Avenue, the construction of a tennis and squash racquet center, and a field support building for Harvard’s women’s rugby team.

The University’s prior IMP, which spanned from 2013-2023, proposed nine major projects which shaped the neighborhood as Harvard’s hub for engineering and innovation. The projects spanned nearly 2 million square feet, and included the Science and Engineering Complex, the Enterprise Research Campus, and Harvard’s Innovation Labs.

Corresponding community benefits — required by the city’s IMPs — include $30 million for the Harvard Ed Portal, a University-run resource for free out-of-school learning opportunities for Allston-Brighton residents.

Allston representatives and organizers were united in their request for funding for the neglected Jackson-Mann Community Center and increasing affordable housing in the neighborhood. Both the HATF and Boston City Councilor Elizabeth A. “Liz” Breadon, who represents the neighborhood, called for an on-campus affiliate housing project, in public comments to the Boston Planning Department in February.

Harvard ultimately agreed to donate up to $1 million to the All Bright Homeownership Program, an initiative that preserves properties’ affordability, as well as conduct a feasibility study of its current properties in the neighborhood, to analyze whether the parcels could be redeveloped into affordable housing.

In an interview with The Crimson, Breadon said that these steps are critical for the neighborhood’s long-term affordable housing supply.

“The Harvard land is a space to negotiate with Harvard to find some spaces so we could build some more housing,” she said. “The Beacon Park Yard project is a huge project that is sort of in the longer term.”

Breadon said she played an active role in negotiating these terms with Harvard. As Allston’s representative in the City Council, she was able to sit down with Harvard representatives and discuss the feasibility of each community benefit, one by one.

Still, she said she would have appreciated more funding for public parks. But broader political and economic uncertainty also complicated negotiations, she said.

“In the present climate, with all that’s happening in the country and in the higher education field, I feel that it’s a lot of uncertainty, and I think we negotiated the best possible deal that we could mutually agree on with Harvard,” she said.

Cindy Marchando, chair of the Harvard Allston Task Force, said that the task force used “emails with the BPD and elected officials” to continue negotiations throughout the week up until the public hearing for the IMP’s final proposal.

Marchando said she felt “underwhelmed” by the version of the IMP that was presented at the meeting, though she recognized that a significant portion of the plan was still uncertain and that the final document for the IMP would not be approved by the city at large for a few months.

“This does not necessarily mean we are ecstatic, happy with the outcome. But, regarding the time that we’re living in right now and considering all those uncertainties, it was the best that could be at the table,” said Marchando.

Anthony P. D’Isidoro, president of the Allston Civic Association, added that though “technically, the IMP was approved today,” individual projects within the IMP are still yet to be finalized.

“When they’re ready to go, they will file a separate IMP development plan for each one of those projects and the Gateway project and some administrative buildings, some athletic facilities,” D’Isidoro said.

Though the vast majority of community benefits discussed on Thursday are committed to by the IMP itself, $15 million of them are known as linkage payments, which will only be distributed if the projects proposed in the IMP are approved by the City of Boston.

As Harvard moves to the next phase of securing approval from the City, Marchando said she appreciated the collaborative relationship between residents and the University which brought the IMP to where it is today.

“I would like to express that the community tried to be and was a good neighbor to have. The task force was a good neighbor to have by absolutely supporting the IMP,” Marchando said.

—Staff writer Angelina J. Parker can be reached at angelina.parker@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @angelinajparker.

—Staff writer Emily T. Schwartz can be reached at emily.schwartz@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @EmilySchwartz37.