Allston Decision Planned for Summer

While a Harvard campus across the river in Allston remains a dream 10 to 15 years from fruition, the University may make a decision as early as next summer as to what shape that campus will take.

According to Senior Adviser to the President Dennis F. Thompson, who chairs the committee planning for Allston, University President Lawrence H. Summers and the Harvard Corporation are aiming to make a decision on the use of Allston land by the end of next summer.

“That [decision] could be as specific as ‘Allston is for science,’” Thompson said. “It could also be that ‘there is no doubt that Allston will be developed as an academic campus and we think some kind of science needs to go there, but that some other activities need to go first.’”

Thompson said while the decisions on Allston are weighty and will affect the University for years to come, time is of the essence. Many of the University’s schools are already feeling the pinch of a major space crunch that will only grow more severe as time goes on.

The decision will grow out of a planning process, begun with Summers’ arrival last year, focusing on three models for the 100-plus acres of underdeveloped University land.

One scenario contemplates moving the Law School and other Cambridge-based schools across the river to join the Business School in a professional school campus.

Another envisions a science campus in Allston with elements from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), Medical School and School of Public Health (SPH).

Planners are also considering a third “culture and community” model, stressing new housing and museums moved from Cambridge.

Aspects of “culture and community” will accompany either science or professional schools in Allston, Thompson said. A mix of all three models is also a possibility.

Thompson’s University Physical Planning Committee (UPPC), with the assistance of a pair of consultants and four faculty advisory committees, have been collecting information on the various schools’ needs since last year. The committee is also studying the advantages and disadvantages of each of the three plans and their feasibility.

Results are beginning to come in, Thompson said, and work has accelerated in anticipation of this summer’s decision.

An architectural consultant and its engineering partner have begun to present preliminary data on various land use possibilities based on what the schools have said they need.

Thompson said their early findings have been encouraging—both of the main models are more plausible than he and others initially suspected.

“We already know that there is more than enough space to accommodate either a science or a graduate school campus that everyone would find appealing,” Thompson said.

The consultants plan to have a draft report ready by mid-spring and a final report in June.

The UPPC and its various off-shoots have resumed meeting this fall, and their work has grown more specific. Faculty have requested ballpark figures on how much each model would cost, Thompson said, and one advisory group—on housing—has begun to issue recommendations.

“[Their] preliminary conclusion is that we need a lot more housing of all kinds, and that much of it will have to be in Allston,” Thompson said.

The UPPC has also asked that faculty housing in Allston be examined, an option that had not been explored before.

An executive committee overseeing these efforts on Allston, composed of Thompson, Provost Steven E. Hyman and a number of other top administrators, has begun meeting bi-weekly. Summers now attends these meetings once a month.

Meanwhile, the UPPC has discovered that the University is in even more of a space crunch than it originally thought.

“Even if we could resolve the community problems, there is no way we could meet our medium-term academic needs in Cambridge,” Thompson said.

The conviction that the Faculty needs to grow has strengthened, and various schools’ plans for the North Yard area are already in conflict.

A decision on Allston’s future use would mark an important step toward resolving these and other problems. But the decision would only be the first step.

While several of the University’s schools—the Graduate School of Education (GSE) and SPH among them—are receptive to the idea of relocating to Allston, others including the Law School and FAS science remain skeptical.

“We think [GSE and SPH] are feeling the pressure that FAS science, the Law School and Kennedy School will feel in five to 10 years,” Thompson said.

The work of convincing schools of the opportunities presented by Allston remains ahead, Thompson said.

—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.