Sprouting Wings

The rapidly growing Kennedy School of Government this week came one step closer to fulfiling its ambitious "initiatives for the 1980s" when officials announced a final decision on the location of the school's new wing and the donor for whom it will be named.

Nince months after entering into consultations with community leaders, and two months after Massachusetts Bay Transity Authority. (MBTA) officials said they would be unable to evacuate their temporary Brattle St. station early, the K-School decided to build a smaller than planned wing on Eliot St. and put the extra footage behind the subway stop.

The K-School also announced that the new wing will be called the Belfer Center, in recognition of a gift of an undisclosed amount from Robert A. Belfer and Renee Belfer. Belfer, president of Belco Oil Company in New York, said in the K-School winter newsletter that the school is "clearly making a major contribution in defining policy options, assisting the planning process, and helping individuals to become better officials at all levels of government."

K-School administrators had originally planned to put the whole expansion--which is needed, they say, to house an ever-increasing number of research centers, students and faculty members--on Eliot St. But community leaders complained that the structure of 50,000 square feet would be out of proportion to the surrounding buildings.

Early this summer the K-School explored expanding on the site currently occupied by the T stop, but MBTA officials said the temporary station could not be moved in time for construction to begin as scheduled. Ira A. Jackson '70, associate dean of the K-school, said this week school officials hope to break ground by the summer and move in by fall of 1983.