Making Feasible' Plans

"The numbers just said 'no way"'--That's how one Harvard staffer last week explained the news that the University would not be able to build an exclusively residential development on a vacant parking lot it bought last winter off Mt. Auburn St.

When Harvard purchased the $4 million property, officials said the land was to be used for housing. And housing, in the models shown community leaders within the last two weeks, remains the primary use for the four-acre parcel across the street from the post office.

But in order to make the numbers work--in order to make the plan economically feasible--University officials are conceding that they'll be forced to include at least some office space in the complex.

Though officials publicly refuse to go beyond community relations spokesman Lewis Armistead's statement that "We'll probably have to look at some alternatives," the models they showed community residents included varying amounts of office space.

Most members of a community advisory panel set up to advise Harvard called the proposals realistic and said they hoped Harvard's newfound enthusiasm for working with surrounding neighborhoods might continue. "So far, I've been very pleased," Thomas Anninger, president of the Neighborhood 10 Association, said, but he added, "Push has not yet come to shove."

One thing the plan does not include is subsidized low and moderate income housing--an omission that will draw fire from community critics, especially in the housing-starved especially in the housing-starved Riverside neighborhood on the other side of the campus.

"If it were my land and I were building it, I would put up some subsidized housing. But realistically, the University seems to be seeking some kind of minimum financial return," Cambridge Mayor Francis H. Duehay '55, who has been meeting with the neighborhood team, said.