Emerson Decides on Lawrence, Again

In yet another twist in the saga of Emerson College's attempt to find a new home, the school this week nixed a plan to move to Beverly and renewed efforts to relocate its campus in Lawrence, its original choice in its two-year search.

The college decided to try once again to move to Lawrence, where the city's proposal for a new campus has been hampered by legal difficulties, because the Beverly site may be contaminated by hazardous waste, college spokesmen said.

The legal problems that Emerson encountered in trying to move to Lawrence remain, but city officials said they were confident that the city would win its case against private owners who claim that the law of eminent domain does not apply to the city's attempt to take their land for public use.

"At the closing arguments, the judge intimated that the case was not going well for the property owners," said James Ball, a Lawrence Development Department spokesman. "We always thought we would win the case. Now we just have to wait for a decision," which we expect to have in the very near future," he said.

After months of frustration over the question of eminent domain, Emerson President Allen E. Koenig gave Lawrence a September deadline to settle out of court with the owners of the 85-acre site on the Merrimack River, or else the school would drop the plan.

When no settlement was reached over the site, which is about 20 miles north of Boston, the school announced its investigation of the Beverly land, about 10 miles northeast of Cambridge.

Last month, Emerson signed a preliminary agreement with the United Shoe Machinery Corp., owners of the Beverly site. But because the site may contain toxic waste, the school informed the company this week that Emerson is no longer interested in relocating there, Harold said.

In order to know whether the site is actually contaminated, and to what degree, the school would need to conduct a feasibility study that would cost $500,000, which the school is not willing to pay, Harold said.

The college would like Lawrence to have a construction plan for the new campus ready by mid-January, Harold said. Ball said that site preparation could begin as soon as the judge rules in the city's favor.

"We'd like to get moving on this thing immediately," Ball said The success of this project would help Lawrence attract other construction programs to the economically depressed area, he said.

But Emerson officials were not optimistic that the school could relocate as quickly as they hoped. "It could still take a long time, certainly past our first projected date of 1988," Harold said.

The school needs to expand because of large increases in the number of applicants, including an 8 percent jump this fall. Its attempts to grow in its current location, Boston's Back Bay area, have run into prohibitive costs.