Co-op to Buy College Land For Housing

A $2.5 million cooperative apartment house may be built on University land near the Charles River, Raymond S. McLay, chairman of the Cambridge Citizens Advisory Committee, announced Wednesday night at a Committee meeting.

The University has agreed to sell the lot on Memorial Drive between Akron and Hingham Streets to the group of citizens that has been planning the 80-unit project. The final decision whether to put the plans into actual operation will follow within a month, McLay said.

In a prepared statement, McLay described the apartment as an innovation which will "show the way to the creation of new living quarters for the so-called middle-income group in Cambridge." President Pusey said that the plan was "one of many projects of space, use, and numbers that the University has under consideration."

Approximately two-thirds of the rooms would have two bedrooms, the rest one, according to preliminary plans. A down payment of $3000 would purchase tenancy in the larger apartments, and rights for the one-bedroom suites would cost $2500.

At the same meeting, Richard C. Lee, Mayor of New Haven, Conn., deplored the lack of federal participation in housing programs and urban renewal. "The plight of the American city is the greatest domestic issue of the 20th century," he declared.

He added that Yale means a great deal to New Haven," in dollars and cents alone," citing a $26 million payroll, money spent by the student body, and purchases by the many people attracted to New Haven by Yale.