City's Renovation Ordinance May Apply to 7 Sumner Rd.

The continuing renovations of a University-owned apartment building at 7 Sumner Road may be illegal under a recently-passed city ordinance requiring property owners to obtain a permit before starting major renovations.

David Sullivan, a candidate for Cambridge City Council who drafted the city ordinance, said yesterday Harvard may be breaking the law by continuing to convert the four-story brick apartment into office space for the Graduate School of Design.

Harvard has never applied for a permit to renovate the property, Michael F. Brewer, assistant vice president for government and community affairs, said yesterday. "I'm not sure we have to," Brewer said, adding that work on the apartment is continuing.

The remaining tenants in the building may press the Cambridge Rent Control Board to stall their evictions because Harvard has no permit, one tenant who wished to remain anonymous said. "Some people are upset enough by everything that's happened to stay and fight," tenant John Henze added.

The bill, which was passed by the city council this summer, has slowed the conversion of apartments to condominiums. "It is more than a condo bill, though," Sullivan said. "It is desiged to cover any removal of housing from the rental market," he said.

One section of the bill specifically prohibits removal of units without a permit for "rehabilitation, repair or improvement...in such a way as to prevent occupancy...."

University officials said Harvard may be exempted from the law because the plans to convert the building had been announced before passage of the act. "Since the work was underway at the time, there is a question of whether 7 Sumner Road was subject," Robert Silverman, a vice president of Harvard Real Estate, Inc., said Sunday.

"I'm sure that's an argument they may be able to make, but as for units removed since the law was passed, they would seem to be covered unless the board or a court found otherwise," James Remeika, who drafted the removal regulations for the Rent Control Board, said Sunday.

"If the unit was on the rental market August 13, then it is covered," Sullivan added, saying the law may afford protection to "anyone still living there."