Task Force, Review Board Agree on JFK Library Goals

Two local agencies fighting for a scaled-down Kennedy Library have nearly finalized a master planning approach acceptable to both the Kennedy Memorial Library Corporation and several citizens groups.

The approach will allow for extensive input from the community on four major issues: traffic and parking logistics, tax status of "related facilities" on three acres of the site, interaction between the library-museum complex and the Harvard Square-Brattle Square area and social impact on the residential neighborhoods to the west, north and east.

The agreement represents the first time Cambridge agencies have successfully negotiated with the Kennedy Corporation regarding the construction of the 27 million-dollar library-museum-graduate school complex.

The City Manager's Project Review Board (primarily professional real estate brokers, architects and lawyers) and the Harvard Square Task Force (mainly non-professionals who live in a surrounding residential area) agree that progress is coming, but disagree on its speed. Theodore Monacelli, chairman of the PRB, said last week that there has certainly been a change in attitude on the library's part.

"We're coming to an understanding on how Harvard Square's commercial-industrial traffic patterns and secondary pedestrian ways will be tied into the site, and that's a big step," he said. One of Monacelli associates would not give specific examples of changes which will result from the new agreement, but said the change was more of a mutual effort to "agree on their approach strategy" so construction could get under way.

Oliver Brooks, chairman of HSTF, said that "things are going much better" but he added that much of his agreement was inconclusive because it was based on faith. He cited the failure of the Federal Government's General Services Ad- ministration to conduct its long-promised environmental impact study.

The HSTF's highest priority now is to insure that the GSA research will be more than a merely perfunctory study slanted to favor the current plans. "Government agencies have a tendency to prepare statements which place the project as it stands in the best possible light," Brooks said. He explained that "the GSA must learn to face reality when it comes before the residents of Cambridge."

Brooks said that the local government agencies' jurisdictions include only three taxable acres out of the total 12 acre site between the Charles and Brattle Square.

Rankine said that those three acres had a lot of bearing on the surrounding space. This "related features" area will probably become luxury housing and retail shopping malls to augment the city's tax-base but he said no decisions have yet been made.

Despite this semi-official speculation on progress, there are individuals, including city councillor Saundra Graham, as well as citizens' groups who will not on faith alone accept architect Monacelli's views. Brooks himself remarked that he "could not say with assurance that the Kennedy Library was here to stay.