Harvard Unveils Scaled-Down Plans For New Hotel on Gulf Station Site

Harvard planners unveiled scaleddown plans for a hotel on the Gulf station site on Mass Ave. last week, drawing praise--and a few gripes--from some prior opponents of the project.

At a meeting of the Harvard Square Advisory Committee Thursday, city residents got their first look at the University's plans for the site since the City Council drastically rezoned it in June, Harvard officials said yesterday.

Although the committee asked the University to make some additional changes, committee member Gladys P. Gifford said no major objections to the revised design were raised.

"The sense of the meeting was great relief at the reduction in size," Gifford said.

The current plans call for a fourstory hotel with 116 bedrooms and no restaurants or large function rooms, according to Director of Community Relations Marilyn Lyng O'Connell. Parking for the building would remain underground, with a vehicular entrance on Mass Ave., O'Connell said.

Harvard initially planned to build a 200-room inn with twice the floor area of the current design, but administration officials postponed that plan after opposition from faculty members who wanted to use the site for library or office space.

Meanwhile, a group of neighborhood residents forced Harvard's hand in June by successfully appealing to the City Council to change the city's zoning laws and reduce the hotel's size. In September, Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence announced that he remained committed to the hotel plans as the best short-term use for the site.

But Gifford, who is also president of the Harvard Square Defense Fund, said that most of the community opposition that paved the way for the downzoning has subsided.

"The idea of the inn--I think people are pretty much bought into that as long as it's going to be a small building with no big function rooms," Gifford said.

"We've gotten some positive readings," said Kathy A. Spiegelman, Harvard's director of planning.

Even Robert J. LaTremouille, one of the city's most ardent foes of new development, acknowledged Monday that the new design was a vast improvement.

Detrimental Effects

But Cambridge architect R. Phillip Dowds, another Defense Fund member who sits on the advisory committee, said that the new plans have not allayed his fears about the hotel's effect on the neighborhood. Even at half-size, he said, a hotel will exacerbate traffic and parking problems in the Square and contribute to an overly "commercial" atmosphere.

Dowds also took issue with Spence's long-range plan eventually to convert the hotel to faculty office space.

"It's one more instance of Harvard owning property in the Square all of which, or rather most of which, is eventually going to come off the tax rolls," Dowds said.

Cambridge architect Graham Gund originally planned a large hotel designed to fit in with the architecture of nearby Harvard buildings--among them Eliot House and Lehman Hall. As a finishing touch, one rendition of the building was topped with a Georgian cupola similar to the one which once adorned the Gulf station.

But project architect Richard L. Bechtel said the new plans would likely downplay the Georgian style.

"It's a transitional site between Harvard and the neighborhood, so we've been looking at the buildings around it for context," Bechtel said. Among the buildings Bechtel examined are the Union and Wigglesworth Hall, he said.

Gifford said the new plans were a vast improvement, adding that Bechtel's design fit in well with nearby structures.

"It's certainly a building that is--what's the word they use--`contextual,'" Gifford said. "Graham Gund's not trying to make a statement, which is great."