Riverside Resolution Fails To Obtain Council Backing

The Cambridge City Council last night defeated a resolution that would have barred Harvard from building on the Treeland site without the prior agreement of the Riverside Planning Team.

Treeland, which is next to Peabody Terrace on Memorial Drive, is part of the Riverside community. Riverside is an integrated working class neighborhood whose residents are being forced to move because of increasing rents caused by Harvard's expansion along the river.

Saundra Graham, representing the Riverside Planning Team, introduced the resolution, which would have instructed the Cambridge City Manager to deny Harvard demolition and building permits for the Treeland site "until such time as Harvard and the Riverside Planning Team agree on a plan that meets the needs of residents for low rent housing."

Councillors Atkins. Coates, and Mayor Vellucoi voted for the Riverside resolution. Councilors Crane and Sullivan voted against it, and Councilors Danehy, Mahoney and Monterief voted "present." Barbara Ackerman was absent, but her vote would not have influenced the outcome, since a majority of the nine-member Council must support any motion before it passes the chamber.

The City Council meeting was packed with Riverside residents and their supporters. Representatives from six organizations (the North Cambridge Planning Team, the Cambridgeport Planning Team, the Socialist Workers Party, the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement. Cambridge Americans for Democratic Action, and the Black and 3rd World Women's Liberation Alliance of Cambridge) endorsed the Riverside group's proposal. Several individuals also voiced their support of the resolution, while no one expressed any opposition to it.

Harvard chose not to send a representative to the Council meeting, although Graham had informed Edward S. Grusin, assistant to President Pusey for Community Affairs, that the resolution would be presented to the City Council at last night's meeting.

According to the Wilson Report, published last year, there are 6800 Harvard personnel living off campus in Cambridge housing, a 34 per cent increase since 1958.