Imbroglio Reveals Cracks in Harvard's Bridge to Boston

A price tag of $75 million for a swath of riverside Boston real estate—the last major undeveloped site in the city—is a deal almost too good to be true.

For Harvard, which purchased the land last week after a harried series of negotiations, it was.

By early this week, area politicians were threatening legal action on the sale. Newspapers around the country buzzed about the possibility of Harvard crippling the area’s economy by relocating the area’s major railyard from the land, or even moving the section of turnpike that runs through it.

“The thing I was upset about was that there was no process the city was considered in,” Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino said. “Harvard just said ‘we’re going to buy it.’ But there’s been no consideration. It was just, ‘let’s get the land, get the deal done.’”

The anger many area politicians expressed last week is reminiscent of the what is widely considered the nadir of Harvard’s relationship with Boston—the imbroglio surrounding Harvard’s 1997 announcement that it had secretly purchased nearly 50 acres of Boston land.

That land was an escape valve for a University badly cramped on this side of the river, unable to make use of holdings in Cambridge due to Byzantine building restrictions and a long history of bad relations with city politicians.

But for the small Allston community and the Boston officials keeping a pulse on their city’s economy, Harvard’s move smacked of invasion.

Menino accused Harvard of waging “a full-scale attack” on the city, as well as displaying “the highest level of arrogance seen in our city in many years.”

“That was a very messy affair,” remembers Paul S. Grogan, the former vice president of government and community affairs who arrived at Harvard shortly afterwards to help clean up the mess. “It exposed the fact that the University didn’t have the relationships in place.”

Grogan is referring to Harvard’s relations with city officials in downtown Boston or the community leaders of the formerly-industrial Allston neighborhood—people now considered essential partners to the University if its development dream, a new campus in Allston, is to come true.

A hired gun brought in to improve ties between Mass. Hall and Boston’s city hall, Grogan opened Harvard’s coffers to needy institutions in the city and kept Boston’s powerful mayor on speed dial.

After a short but revolutionary term, Grogan, Harvard’s Boston specialist, moved on in 2001. But now, Harvard’s relations with the beantown are more important than ever.

In the coming months, top University officials are expected to develop its plans for the new campus.

Then, negotiations over what by all accounts will be massive development expected redefine an entire Boston neighborhood will begin in earnest.

While Harvard has made inroads towards a good relationship with Menino and other area leaders, the battle over Harvard’s 91-acre purchase exposes major fault lines and old wounds in a still-touchy, ever-evolving town-gown bond.

91 Acres and a Turnpike?

Harvard’s latest buy from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority is crisscrossed by train tracks and cut through by a section of the Massachusetts Turnpike, both of which are protected by easements that stretch into the indefinite future.

The deal was a far cry from Harvard’s last deal with the Turnpike Authority. When it bought a 48-acre parcel just north of the 91-acre piece in 2000, Menino gave his endorsement, and the University was trusted to make future changes on the land only with the approval of the neighborhood and the city.

In this deal, Harvard has consulted less with the city—and city and state officials have been a lot less willing to trust the University’s assurances.

“It would have been very difficult to purchase the Turnpike land without the mayor’s public blessing,” says Grogan, who made Harvard’s case for the 48-acre deal to officials in Boston’s city hall.

But this time around, Harvard’s team, which in January was carbon copied on a letter from the mayor to the Turnpike Authority protesting the auction, knew that City Hall would oppose the sale even before they made a bid. As the cash-strapped Turnpike Authority pushed ahead, Harvard eagerly followed.

The mayor and others have said they’re distressed with the speed and closed-door nature of the sale.

Some have even compared Harvard’s behavior during this deal to what they term Harvard’s stealthy tactics in 1997.

“They haven’t cared much for their credibility in the past, and their surreptitious land deals attest to that,” says Secretary of State William Galvin, referring to the 1997 land-grab controversy. “They don’t seem to have more concern for their credibility now than they did then.”

Galvin says his trust in the University was compromised last Thursday, when he discovered that protections promised by Harvard for the MBTA’s easements were inexplicably missing from the deal’s paperwork.

Galvin stopped the deal at the last minute, as lawyers for Harvard, the Turnpike and the MBTA were assembling the sale.

“We always intended those to be separate, and referred to, and filed the next day,” Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs Alan J. Stone says of the protections, which were added by the lawyers during an overnight meeting. “It might have been our fault, it might have been their fault, but it was unintentional regardless. It was an honest misunderstanding.”

Galvin says he’s unconvinced.

He says he fears that Harvard’s development could mean significant environmental damage or the relocation of the Turnpike.

“I don’t expect that Harvard is not going to develop the land,” says Galvin of Harvard’s promises. “They’re reasonably interested, and they have a reasonable thought of developing something there.”

Along with the mayor, Galvin has called for the sale to be nulled by the Governor.

Fault Lines

The controversy over the 91-acre deal highlights fundamental disagreements between town and gown about the degree and ways that the Harvard should consult the city—disagreements that have remained unresolved since 1997.

Harvard officials say they try to keep Boston officials in the loop about the University’s plans.

“We make courtesy calls so the mayor doesn’t have to read about it in the paper,” Stone says. “We try to keep him informed of what we’re doing.”

But the mayor says he wants more of a voice at the table.

“There should have been more consultation with the city,” Menino says. “They told us they wanted to do it, yes. But what’s the future use of it, we don’t know. And will that have any economic impact on the future of our products coming into our city? There’s uncertainty about whether the railyard will be shut down.”

Now as then, local and state politicians say they are particularly anxious to know what Harvard is planning for the broad swaths of Boston the University now owns.

This spring, as the Turnpike Authority and Harvard tried to negotiate a land deal, local and state politicians asked again and again what Harvard would do. Mass. Hall remained mostly silent.

On multiple occasions, University spokesperson Lauren Marshall gave the press the same prepared statement: “We have no plans to change this property in the foreseeable future. This is a long-term investment and we are thinking about the needs of the University in the future.”

Later, as the controversy heated up, Stone released another statement: ”As we have said before, we’re fully prepared to sit down and discuss all issues of concern.’’

While planners in the Holyoke Center—home to the University’s newly-formed Allston Initiative—are exploring a host of particular options, University officials say they don’t know what Harvard will do with the land, and won’t know until a variety of consultants and committees wrap up their work.

“Because the University hasn’t made a commitment to an academic objective for Allston we cant figure out where to start,” says Kathy Spiegelman, the director of the Allston Initiative.

Stone says he wants to make it clear to City Hall that Harvard has no interest in hurting the city.

“We don’t want any transportation needs in the area to be compromised, and that continues to be our position.”

Even though Grogan and then-President Neil L. Rudenstine worked to patch things up between Mass Hall and City Hall after the 47-acre debacle, Menino says that Harvard has work to do before it can gain his trust.

“I’ve seen other universities and how they’ve reached to their cities, and been a real part of the progress of a city,” says Menino. “I’d like to see the same thing happen with Harvard. They could be a very beneficial part to the growth of Boston, and I’d like to take advantage of that,” Menino adds. “But it seems like they want to keep an arms-length relationship.”

Stone admits that Harvard’s relationship isn’t great, but says difficulties can arise unpredictably from both directions.

“Our relationship to City Hall is not perfect—there’s always so much going on, we have new projects all the time and lately the city has had it rough economically. It’s a dynamic relationship.”

On Sunday—after the political fallout from the 91-acre deal began—Stone said he planned to meet with city officials this week to address their concerns.

“We’ll work hard at our relationship with the mayor, we’ll work very hard,” Stone said.

The Summers-Menino Connection

March 12, 2000, the day the Harvard Corporation named Summers the 27th president, was a busy one for the former treasury secretary. His whirlwind visit to Cambridge was spent in press conferences and introductory meetings with University administrators.

But before arriving at Loeb House to discuss faculty recruitment, the state of the sciences at Harvard, and land expansion into Allston, Summers first priority was to make some phonecalls. Mayor Menino was one of the first people on his list.

As a Washington insider entering a politically intense and widely influential post, Summers knew the importance of getting to know the local leadership. Grogan, who as Stone’s predecessor who helped guide the president-elect in his early days, says that Summers’ drive to build political relationships is a new and important one for the University.

“Summers came in with the idea that forging these connections was part of his job,” Grogan says. “He’s spent far more time with local officials than any president in Harvard history.”

Sensitive to the President’s enthusiasm, Menino carefully acknowledged the potential for a relationship with the University in his third-term inaugural address in January 2002

“If Boston has a friend in President Larry Summers, then Harvard has a friend in City Hall,” Menino said in his speech, which was otherwise focused on the beleaguered municipal economy.

But Summers wasn’t at the speech.

The friendship between Mass. Hall and downtown Boston has been sustained by phone.

Menino’s cautious bread-breaking statement about being friends with Summers in his inaugural came alongside a public call for the University to expand its medical school to the Crosstown area of Roxbury, where the mayor envisions a lucrative research park.

“This would make the neighborhood stronger and create jobs for the people of Boston,” Menino said.

But in June of 2002, Summers told The Globe that he had decided that Harvard would not lease space at Crosstown.

Menino was reportedly livid that he did not hear about Harvard’s decision directly, but rather from a Globe reporter.

“It was basically a mistake, a miscommunication,” Stone said at the time. “We thought we had let the mayor know, but it didn’t get through to him. It was an unfortunate mistake. We regret it.”

But, according to Globe columnist David Nyhan—who helped draft Menino’s inaugural address—such mistakes can prove quite costly with a mayor like Menino, who has a long-term memory and a low tolerance for betrayal.

“What Summers has to know about Menino is that he’s the type of guy who when he makes a deal, he makes a deal,” Nyhan says. “He doesn’t spend political capital easily.”

Menino himself says the personal relationship with Summers is good, but adds that he would like Harvard to approach the city differently.

“I like Summers personally, but its not a personal thing at all,” says the mayor. “It’s about a different approach to this city when you own more land here than you do in Cambridge.”

PILOTing the Way

Harvard officials and Boston leaders agree that the University does a lot to help the area—and could do even more.

Despite highly public sparring, Harvard and Boston agree they need each other.

A short walk across the bridge that leads from Cambridge onto Allston’s North Harvard street, past the ivy-covered Georgian facades of the business school and Harvard Stadium, reveals a town in need of repair.

The streets are cracked, garbage lies in the gutter, and the main streets are lined by a collection of auto body shops, gas stations and fast food restaurants.

At monthly meetings with the North Allston community, Harvard officials and the University’s new neighbors sketch out plans for what they hope the neighborhood will look like in the future. University representatives often stress the ways Harvard could help the community.

“For now, it seems to me that both sides are circling each other wearily,” Nyhan says. “I have always felt that Harvard has a lot of opportunities to help Boston.”

Two weeks ago, Menino called on Harvard and a few other wealthy tax-exempt institutions to increase their voluntary payments in-lieu-of taxes (PILOT) to help fill city coffers.

Last fall, Harvard agreed to pay another of its newer host cities, Watertown, at least $3.8 million annually—a figure which, Harvard officials say, significantly raises the bar for Harvard’s PILOT in Boston and elsewhere.

“We enunciated a principle with respect to PILOT payments in the context of the Watertown deal, and we’re certainly prepared to implement that principle,” Summers said in an interview last month.

Harvard currently pays Boston about $1.6 million in voluntary payments.

Menino says that his call for Harvard in particular to make higher payments was a warning to the University as they seek zoning permissions for their new property in Allston—“I will insist [PILOT] be part of the negotiations,” Menino told The Globe.

But officials at Harvard are quick to point to current philanthropic activities, such as its highly-touted Boston after-school program and its contributions to an Allston-Brighton affordable housing fund. And Mary Power, Harvard’s senior director of community relations, also underscores that the University’s contributions do not come solely in the form of cash.

“It’s implicit that Harvard’s development helps the city’s economy,” she says.

Power points to a recent study funded by Harvard and seven other local universities that demonstrates how the academic research institutions provide vital economic support, even in times of recession.

Grogan, who oversaw the beginning of the impact study, says that the study’s demonstration of universities’ economic value is a valuable political tool for institutions like Harvard.

“It’s a way to increase their stature, and to increase the level of cooperation they will get from the political world, the business world, and surrounding communities,” says Grogan, who as former vice president for government and community relations, knows the territory well.

He warns that an old-fashioned approach to wealthy universities needs to be abandoned for more reciprocal relationships.

“It’s a mistake for cities to think of these universities as cash machines,” he says.

Grogan, the author of Comeback Cities, believes that better partnerships between universities, communities, and businesses can help Boston’s economy.

He hopes such a paradigm could replace the “extraction model,” in which cities simply take from universities.

“We’ll get there when we look at [universities] as strategic partners, and not in a parasitic way. The extraction model is really old thinking when there are all these other things to do.”

Like many inside and outside the University, Grogan sees academic institutions as draws for bio-tech and engineering firms—and the talent they attract—to come to Boston and stay or the long term.

“[New companies] will be attracted to an environment where there’s a yeasty, innovative stew, a lot of contact with industry and a lot of opportunity,” Grogan says.

Attracting businesses like drug companies and computer manufacturers is “squarely in the University’s interest, and squarely in the interest of Boston.”

Christopher F. Gabrieli ’81, a biotech entrepreneur and friend of Menino who recently made an unsuccessful run for Mass. Lieutenant Governor, agrees.

“How does Massachusetts bolster the biotech industry?” Gabrieli asks. “Not by writing checks, but by providing intellectual leadership and partnerships.”

Gabrieli cites a widely-quoted speech by Summers in which he proposed Boston as a Silicon Valley East for biotech research as evidence of Harvard’s influence among academics and businesspeople alike.

“The bully pulpit is one of Harvard’s greatest assets,” Gabrieli says. “That statement was very powerful and was quoted a lot among the industry.”

Acknowledging Harvard’s potential role in Boston’s development, Menino says he has already discarded the “extraction model” in favor of a partnership approach.

“I’m not a person that sits in the mayor’s office and says, ‘well, Harvard has a lot of resources, I want to take their resources.’ I want to work with them. With the brain-power and the resources they have, they’re a very valuable resource to our city.”

Grogan is quite familiar with the tumultuous, fault-ridden relationship between his city and the University.

Still, he says, the needs on both sides of the Charles make the marriage inevitable, and its up to both Boston and Harvard to make it work.

“The idea is to forge very cooperative relationships. That’s not to say there won’t be difficulties, misunderstandings, even outbreaks of conflict in the future over specific plans and projects,” Grogan says. “But it does make a difference to have a mindset that says we want to work it out. Because there’s too much at stake not to.”

—Staff writer Alex L. Pasternack can be reached at apastern@fas.harvard.edu.