Riverside Residents Protest Plans

Harvard’s planned development in Riverside will kill neighborhood character and block access to the Charles River, angry residents protested at a meeting with Cambridge city councillors and Harvard developers last night.

Harvard unveiled proposals to construct new housing for at least 415 graduate students in Riverside on Monday.

Harvard’s offer to construct affordable housing around Cambridge and a public garden along the Charles River did not mollify Riverside residents, who said they would resist any major University expansion in their neighborhood.

Riverside residents are pressuring councillors to ban new Harvard buildings in their neighborhood over 24 feet tall, which would rule out the planned graduate student housing.

Residents also said that by introducing its proposals only a month and a half before the matter comes to a vote in the city council, Harvard is not allowing ample time for negotiations.

“I really resent that this is coming so late in the processs,” said Councillor Marjorie Decker, one of the council’s most aggressive supporters of strict zoning. “It is a red herring...It couldn’t be a genuine offer because if it were it would have been on the table [last] spring.”

Decker is one of four council members who have expressed support for the zoning restriction. It needs seven out of nine votes to pass.

Graduate student housing, University developers say, will relieve pressures on the tight Cambridge rental market. It will also help Harvard to meet its goal of increasing the number of graduate students housed from 38 to 51 percent.

Harvard hopes to build on its Memorial Drive plot, which is now leased to Mahoney’s Garden Center, and some of its other plots on residential Riverside streets.

Almost three years ago, the University had considered building an art museum on the Mahoney’s site, but dropped that plan, which Riverside had opposed.

The residents are unwilling to allow development in an area they say is already overcrowded by Leverett House, Mather House and Peabody Terrace.

Last night Riverside residents came out in droves to voice their support of the neighborhood petition, dubbed the ‘Carlson petition’ for its first signer and major proponent, local filmmaker Cob Carlson.

However, wearing “I crow for the Carlson Petition” stickers on their lapels, they ran into opposition from the local carpenters’ union.

They argued that more Harvard construction will create new jobs, though they did not discuss any of the actual designs.

The carpenters also said that they would want the affordable housing and public space that Harvard was offering in its plans.

Carlson said, however, that the carpenters had been “trotted along” by the University as a mouthpiece for big construction.

“Don’t be hoodwinked or fooled into thinking that building 35-foot buildings is going to create all sorts of jobs, because it isn’t,” Carlson said.

His comments solicited heckling from the carpenters’ unions, who were gathered along the walls of the Cambridge Senior Center.

The planning board has introduced its own petition with more moderate restrictions on Harvard building.

Both Harvard and the residents however, dismissed the planning board petition as unsatisfactory, and few councillors mentioned it yesterday evening.

Kathy Spiegelman, Harvard’s chief planner, and Mary H. Power, senior director of community relations, were present alongside hired architects to represent the University.

—Claire A. Pasternack contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Alexandra N. Atiya can be reached at atiya@fas.harvard.edu.