Residents Support Plan for Housing In Mission Hill

A 774-unit mixed-income housing project that Harvard has provided land for in the Mission Hill area received heavy community support Tuesday night at a Boston Redevelopment Authority Board meeting held in the area.

The BRA called the hearing to determine whether Mission Park Associates--the developing entity comprised of the Roxbury Tenants of Harvard and two private developers--should be granted a permit that allows for tax exempt construction.

Harvard offered the land for the $47-million project in February as part of a Memorandum of Understanding signed between Harvard and RTH. Harvard's recognized neighborhood bargaining agent for the area.

State representatives, the president of RTH, and other community leaders praised the project during most of the two-and-one-half-hour meeting.

Although construction could begin on the project in a matter of months if the BRA grants approval to the project soon, a major obstacle to the housing project's authorization may be a planned $50-million Medical Area Service Corporation Power plant that Harvard is sponsoring a few blocks from the housing project.

H. Ralph Taylor, a developer and one of the three parties involved in Mission Park Associates, said at the hearing that the "economic viability of the housing development is contingent on the ability to get thermal energy from the power plant."

However, residents in the Mission Hill area, including the Mission Hill planning commission, and Boston Edison, which stands to lose the electric accounts of the institutions if the plant is built, have come out against the plant, and disagree with the assessment that the housing and the plant are inseparable.

After the meeting Robert Kenney, director of the BRA, said he is "not satisfied at this point that it (the housing) is contingent on the power plant."

"We are not willing to accept off-hand statements that it is so," Kenney said.