Allston Property Poses Challenges, Possibilities

When University President Lawrence H. Summers laid out the main goals for his tenure and for Harvard’s next century at his installation ceremony last October, he said the University must come together to expand into Allston.

“If we make the right choices—if we take full advantage of a physical opportunity across the river in Allston—an opportunity to create a campus that is several times as large as this whole yard—we will have earned the gratitude of future generations,” he said.

But before Harvard can begin its new campus, it must consolidate its 271 acres, much of it acquired over the last 15 years, scattered in fourteen small parcels and two large, contiguous plots, rented out to dozens of tenants with leases that vary in length from one year to perpetuity. Harvard is starting to close its first moves to gather the land together and clear it for development.

In the coming months, Harvard will likely begin by moving administrative offices into pre-existing buildings facing the river along Soldier’s Field Road, according to Kevin A. McCluskey ’76, Harvard’s Director of Community Relations for Boston.

In the near term of the next few years, construction will start on graduate student housing, most likely in an area adjacent to the Harvard Business School (HBS).

But the large, contiguous areas required for a new academic campus remain heavily encumbered by railroads with permanent rights-of-way, long-term housing and industrial facilities, and a popular shopping center.

Administrators say that Summers’ dream—a new campus in Allston—could be underway in less than a decade.

“If clearing hurdles to the use and configuration of land is successful, we are talking about a 5- to 10-year timeframe for starting campus development,” Kathy A. Spiegelman, associate vice president for planning and real estate, wrote in an e-mail.

Small Victories

Opening a key space at the center of Harvard’s Allston real estate, three tenants between HBS and Harvard’s recently acquired 48-acre parcel of land to the south are preparing to leave their properties.

“We’re thinking first about the contiguous property,” Spiegelman says.

Harvard has worked out a deal—not yet closed—to buy out WGBH’s lease and gain its facilities on both sides of Western Avenue, and to buy an adjacent property from WGBH that now holds a Pepsi bottling plant, according to WGBH’s Vice President for Communications Jeanne M. Hopkins.

Harvard helped WGBH find a new home at Brighton Landing where it could consolidate its various Allston buildings into one facility.

By keeping WGBH in Boston, Harvard has stayed in the good graces of Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who took a personal interest in WGBH staying in the city.

“He’s been pretty emphatic” says Kathy L. Kottaridis, Boston Redevelopment Authority’s Director of Economic Development.

The New England Depository Library (NEDL) is also on the way out. NEDL stores “low use” materials for Harvard and a half-dozen other college and local libraries, but has run out of space and is looking for a “new home,” according to its spokesperson, Director of Communications for Harvard College Library Beth Brainard. If it relocates, most likely as part of Boston Public Library’s new storage facility, Harvard would have the first option to acquire the land.

“There is an agreement between NEDL and Harvard that if NEDL would go Harvard would have all rights to the property,” Brainard says.

Large Obstacles

With those deals, Harvard has prepared only a small percentage of its land. Railroads, housing projects, and industrial tenants still hinder development on the largest contiguous patches.

A large, Johnson-era public housing project stands at the corner of Western Avenue, just next to NEDL in the intersection which Harvard-hired planners tentatively vision as a bustling new “Allston Square” commercial center between the academic campus and residential Allston.

City Hall expects Harvard to leave the Charlesview Apartments out of its plans.

“I don’t think there would ever be an attempt on the part of Harvard or the city to try and acquire or relocate Charlesview unless it came from the residents, and I don’t see that happening either,” says Jansi Chandler, the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s Project Manager who oversees the North Allston planning process.

But Harvard officials don’t completely rule out the possibility of a “collaboration” between Harvard and Charlesview.

“I’ve had discussions with Josephine Fiorentino, the chair of Charlesview’s Board, and have also stressed publicly that any conversations, potential discussion, of possible collaboration between Harvard and Charlesview will begin with a conversation with her,” says McCluskey.

On Harvard’s Charles river property, Genzyme pharmaceuticals has a plant besides the Charles with a lease until 2057.

The plant manufactures a drug called Cerazyme, which treats a rare genetic disorder called Gaucher’s disease, and Genzyme plans to keep producing the drug there for a “long time,” said Genzyme executive John Calvino.

The rest of Allston Landing is cut in half by a large trainyard owned by CSX Transportation, which has right-of-way through the property in perpetuity, and has given no sign it will move, though Harvard is still keeping that alive as an option.

“With the trains you could talk in theory about moves or [land] swaps. At least there’s a potential,” said University Spokesperson Joe Wrinn. “But we have not arrived at a point where we have a mutual agreeable solution.”

The CSX easements have long been the thorn in the side of potential Allston developers. They prevented Genzyme’s plans to expand in the early 90s.

“We could never get anything by that railroad. No luck whatsoever,” Henry J. Fitzgerald, Genzyme’s vice president of engineering and facility cevelopment told the Crimson last year. “In fairness to the railroad, it’s not something you can easily pick up and move.”

Unlike Allston Landing, convenient to the Yard and HBS, there is a second large, contiguous patch of property—a busy shopping center with a Star Market, a K-Mart, and a Petco—deeper in Allston.

Harvard is likely to keep that property in commercial retail use in the near term, according to McCluskey.

The University has put significant resources into improving the popular shopping center.

“We just made improvements on the whole shopping area and made it a much more attractive and usable space,” McCluskey says.

Planning

Since June of last year, Boston-based planners Goody, Clancy and Associates—a firm picked by the city and paid for by Harvard—have been working with the community to put together a “Community Master Plan,” that will set guidelines for zoning that will determine the scale of Harvard’s Allston buildings.

The Community Master Planning is expected to finish between June and September, according to Jansi Chandler, BRA project manager for North Allston.

Under normal circumstances, Harvard would renew its Institutional Master Plan—an overview of planned construction for the next five years—on July 1, but certainly Harvard’s internal planning and likely the CMP won’t be done by then.

“They don’t have to renew their master plan unless there are buildings they want to build in the next five or so years,” said B. Owen Donnelly, who oversees the Master Plans of all institutions in Boston.

Harvard will likely get an extension for filing a new IMP so they can move further along in their internal planning before and finish the CMP before committing to a five-year vision, according to Ray Mellone, chair of the North Allston Community Task Force that participates in the CMP.

Harvard can move administrative uses into existing office building—like those along Soldier’s Field—without having the zoning changed.

“If there were space in one of these buildings that we needed to use on a short-term basis, that wouldn’t necessarily require us to declare it right away as institutional use,” McCluskey said.

Meanwhile, inside Harvard, two internal planning groups are considering scenarios for the Allston land—a University-wide physical planning committee with faculty representatives from the different school and a committee at Harvard Law School considering its potential move to Allston.

So far the Physical Planning Committee has focused on three options for the Allston land.

At first, discussion centered on building graduate student dorms and several museums. Later, the discussion shifted to a professional campus with several graduate schools. Recently, a third option emerged, to create a state-of-the-art science campus with possible commercial tie-ins.

Regardless of which plan the university adopts, Allston development will be top priority for President Summers’ adminstration.

“Larry Summers absolutely sees this plan for a new campus in Allston as a keystone of his presidency,” Spiegelman says.

—Staff writer Lauren R. Dorgan can be reached at dorgan@fas.harvard.edu.