Mike Brewer: 'It's Been A Lot of Fun'

It will be quite a switch for Michael F. Brewer, assistant vice president for government and community affairs. Friday afternoon, when he walks out of the Grays Hall community relations office he has run for more than a year, he will leave behind Harvard and its dealings with Cambridge in exchange Cummins Engine Co. of Indiana and its diesel engine deals with the world.

Brewer, who has worked at Harvard for seven years, says he is looking forward to the new post, but is also suffering twinges of disappointment over leaving the University and this city behind.

Acutely aware of the history of Harvard/Cambridge relations, Brewer said yesterday he thinks new frictions centering on University land use are on the increase.

Roll 'em in

"In the 1960s, it was the effect of enrollment expansion that the community was worried about," Brewer said, adding "people were worried that the new students were putting a real pressure on the local housing market."

When plateauing enrollments practically eliminated that problem in the early part of this decade, Brewer said, concern shifted to "actual physical expansion by the institutions--the new libraries and classrooms, and the landbanking." The 1972 and 1975 "Red Line" boundaries on University expansion helped ease those tensions, Brewer maintains, saying "we have been pretty faithful to those community reports."

Now it is not the land Harvard owns that worries people, Brewer says. Instead, he points out, there is more tension surrounding what the University plans to do with land is acquires. Residents are worried that their Harvard-owned apartments may someday turn into offices, basketball courts or DNA labs.

It's Been Real

"We are starting to see real concern about these issues," Brewer says, adding that he doubts the University is bent on hell-for-leather growth. "New fields of study will open up over the years, and a few of the schools may grow. That may mean putting up some new buildings and renovating some old ones, but the growth won't ever be anything of the same magnitude we saw 15 years ago," he said. The community is also concerned about the danger University growth might pose to access to rental housing among Cantabrigians of "all income mixes," Brewer said. "The character of the Square, and the pressures all along Mass Ave, are going to be another issue," he added, citing the zoning restrictions put on the Square last year and the debate over development in the southwest corner of the Square as intimations of that concern."

Pressure

Dealing with community pressure--responding to angry neighbors--has become a large part of the job of the community relations office in the last few years. Controversy has marked Brewer's year on the job, from the furor over a wall near the Church Street Garage, to the leasing of a building across the "Red Line" on Ware St., to the messy eviction of tenants from 7 Sumner Rd.

"People expect us, by virtue of our size and mission, to adhere to a purer standard than (other) private institutions," Brewer said, adding quickly that he does not object to that role for the University. "I think we ought to act toward our neighbors in neighborly fashsion."

Even when Harvard is on its best behavior, though, people tend naturally to point to it as the cause of any trouble, Brewer says. "Harvard is a sitting target, the biggest boy on the block," he said.

A successor will be picked sometime later this year, and in the interim Brewer's assistant, Lewis Armistead, will handle many of the administrative chores.

"The advice I would give my successor is to enjoy the job," Brewer said. "There are days when you want to take everyone's name in vain, but basically it's a lot of fun."