Resident Opposition Rises Again Against Shady Hill Housing Plans

Word that Harvard has revived an 11-year old plan for a Faculty housing project in the Shady Hill area touched off a wave of phone calls to the University yesterday, along with demands that neighbors have some say in what happens to the six-acre tract Harvard owns there.

Harvard officials had expressed the hope in recent weeks that Cambridge's serious housing shortage would forestall protests similar to those which forced the shelving of the plans in 1955.

But completion of the project by late next fall is not as certain as the CRIMSON indicated yesterday. University officials said yesterday afternoon that the financing cannot be accomplished in the near future, although the project remains high on the University's list of future housing programs.

The possibility of a sharply increased housing demand if the Inner Belt passes through Cambridge, displacing 1500 families, has made the residents aware that something must be done with the property, but most of them do not approve of the proposed design -- 100 interconnected town houses.

"Many people think the University is not terribly wise in its recommendations about housing," a resident in the area said.

The neighborhood opposition includes several senior Harvard Faculty members, some of whom participated in the original fight against the project when President Pusey first presented it in 1955.

"There is the beginning of a community campaign -- not to keep people out, but to make sure that what goes up will enhance the hard-won quality of the neighborhood," a neighbor of Harvard's land said yesterday.

The neighbor said that residents want Harvard to do something with the property -- currently covered with scrub -- but hope that whatever is built will not destroy the appearance of the Shady Hill area.

Phone calls to the University yesterday came from two quarters: from neighbors concerned about the project near their homes, and from current and future Harvard junior Faculty members interested in the potential homes.