But What Will the Neighbors Think?

After three years of discussions culminating in a marathon of late-night negotiating sessions, Lawrence Adkins was tired—but not too tired to stand with a group of other residents of the Riverside neighborhood and applaud.

On the night of October 27, the Cambridge City Council voted unanimously to approve a watershed agreement with Harvard that laid the groundwork for the University’s development of an area where town-gown tensions stretched back for decades.

“We’ve got something to feel good about today. We have struck the best deal possible,” said Adkins, president of the Riverside Neighborhood Association, who added that he felt positive “even though I’ve been here since 8 a.m...and I’m sure I look like it.”

Less than two months later, a group of residents from another Cambridge neighborhood would applaud, when the Agassiz Neighborhood Council overwhelmingly voted in favor of a 25-year agreement with the University which will allow Harvard to expand its law and science facilities in exchange for millions of dollars worth of benefits to the community.

These two deals came in neighborhoods that have had different historical relations with Harvard and different areas of primary concern for the residents, but they both represented major victories for the University’s community relations staff, led by Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs Alan J. Stone, who has garnered praise from city officials since his arrival in Nov. 2001 for creating stronger ties with Cambridge.

Still, the University has a long way to go to earn the trust of many Cantabrigians, who say they are holding back on their praise of the agreements until they see Harvard live up to its end of the bargain.

“I think people are very nervous about whether it’s actually going to come to be,” says Riverside resident Phyllis Baumann of the agreement in her neighborhood. “There’s enough distrust out there and there’s enough history out there that members of the community won’t believe it until they see it.”

As Harvard seeks to expand into Allston and build ties with its Boston neighbors who will bear the brunt of the University’s future development, the two agreements reached this past year in Cambridge provide not only models of successful negotiation, but also a warning of the potential difficulty of winning a community’s trust.

LET’S MAKE A DEAL

Last August, 50 members of the Riverside neighborhood told their elected officials that Harvard was encroaching on their space and had to be stopped.

In three hours of testimony, the residents urged the city council’s Ordinance Committee to support a development plan for the neighborhood that would sharply limit Harvard’s ability to build on its property.

“It’s time for Harvard to compromise and stop their predatory ways,” said Cob Carlson, the first signer of the rezoning petition that bore his name and had substantial support in the neighborhood.

This type of anti-Harvard sentiment was not new in Riverside, a working-class community along the Charles River, where residents feel they were pushed aside to make way for some of Harvard’s tallest and most hated buildings, including the enormous concrete Peabody Terrace and Mather Tower.

In spring 1970, about 350 Riverside residents marched to Harvard Yard during Commencement weekend, and some of them jumped onto the stage during the ceremony to protest Harvard’s development in their area.

Three decades later, in fall 2000, Riverside activists obtained a building moratorium from the city council to halt Harvard’s plans for an art museum on a property along Memorial Drive.

Even Stone acknowledges that one year ago, many residents believed Harvard would not be able to reach an amicable solution in the area.

“But a lot took place in a year,” Stone says.

Under the terms of the agreement approved by the city council, Harvard received permission to build taller buildings than the Carlson petition would have allowed in return for creating a public park on its land and building low-income housing units for city residents. The University plans to construct graduate student housing in Riverside.

“I’m not thrilled by it, but I think Harvard is probably not thrilled by it either,” resident Alec Wysoker ’84 said at the time. “It brings a lot of benefit to the city and the neighborhood.”

In December, the Agassiz neighborhood north of Harvard Yard overwhelmingly approved a separate agreement with Harvard, which will allow the University to construct 1.6 million square feet of space over the next 25 years.

The Agassiz deal gives Harvard the assurance that it will be able to proceed with its expansion of Harvard Law School and the science departments of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). In return, it offers the community a limit on the University’s development in the area, as well as a multimillion-dollar package of benefits ranging from funds for after-school programs to landscaping to traffic improvement measures.

In contrast to the grueling last-minute negotiations in Riverside—where the two sides came together on the last possible day for the city council to act on the neighborhood’s zoning petition—the progress on the agreement in Agassiz was steady over the course of a whole year.

And there is less bad blood between the University and the residents in Agassiz, where community members opted to enter into negotiations from the start, rather than taking Riverside’s more contentious route.

“Traditionally Harvard is the enemy,” says William Bloomstein, one of the four representatives of the Agassiz Committee on the Impacts of Development (ACID) who negotiated the deal with Harvard. “Rather than that approach, we decided to engage Harvard in a collaborative discussion, to understand and to figure out where there were mutual interests that could be met.”

But in this neighborhood, too, the residents have not always been convinced a cooperative relationship with Harvard would be possible. In an informal straw poll conducted at a neighborhood meeting two years ago, residents voted 24-1, with two abstentions, in favor of blocking all Harvard construction in the area.

And even after residents opted to negotiate instead, they did not always see eye-to-eye with the University.

“Those discussions, while less adversarial than the Riverside negotiations, were at times, too, very difficult,” Stone says. “They presented very strong interests that seemed to be different from Harvard’s own interests.”

City Councillor Brian P. Murphy ’86-’87 says in both Agassiz and Riverside, the residents’ first choice would have been for no institutional development to take place at all. But he says the residents realized that if expansion was unavoidable, they wanted to have a say in how it was done.

“In each case people recognized, ‘If change is going to take place, I’d rather be at the table helping to shape that change and to ensure that the community’s concerns are listened to,’” Murphy says.

COME TOGETHER

In both neighborhoods, residents say Harvard officials put themselves in a better position to negotiate by offering benefits that really mattered to the community.

Mayor Michael A. Sullivan says the provisions offered in Riverside were “quantifiable” and targeted two of the city’s priorities: providing affordable housing and preserving open space.

In Agassiz, Harvard took steps to reduce the noise, dust and disruption caused by construction, which has been a key issue in a neighborhood facing years of development on all sides.

And by providing a 25-year picture of its development plans in Agassiz, Harvard responded to the common complaint from neighborhood residents that the University proposes building projects one at a time, without offering any insight into its long-term vision.

“For the first time in this neighborhood’s history, we had a true sense from Harvard as to what the total build-out was going to be,” Bloomstein says.

Stone says the University “modified slightly our modus operandi” in Agassiz by having representatives from the law school and FAS together at the table to present a more unified picture of the development plans—something that has been difficult to do in the past at this notoriously decentralized institution where each school has pursued its own projects.

Bloomstein says he felt it was “very positive” for the neighbors to be able to meet face-to-face with Stone and other high-level administrators.

“It demonstrated how serious Harvard was about the process,” he says.

In Riverside, residents say they did not feel they always had the chance to speak with people at Harvard who were authorized to negotiate on the spot.

“On occasion, Harvard representatives would actually make a decision in the room,” Wysoker says. “The vast majority of the time we would be expected to make decisions in the room and Harvard would say, ‘We’ll get back to you.’”

But Murphy, one of the councillors who took a lead role in the behind-the-scenes Riverside negotiations, says he thinks Harvard’s representatives “were getting their marching orders from Mass. Hall and had a very good sense of what they could and couldn’t do.”

“It allowed us, I think, to move through the process and to come to agreements,” he says.

ROCKY ROAD

Despite the ultimately successful resolutions, the process of arriving at agreements was not always smooth in either neighborhood.

In Agassiz, Harvard officials met with four representatives who negotiated on behalf of the neighborhood, and at several community meetings throughout the process, other residents raised concerns about their lack of direct involvement.

A similar negotiating structure fell apart two years ago in Mid-Cambridge when residents objected to Harvard’s proposal to build a tunnel underneath Cambridge Street to connect the two halves of its new Center for Government and International Studies. A team of neighborhood, University and city representatives reached a tentative accord that would have allowed Harvard to build the tunnel in exchange for community benefits. But a neighborhood negotiating representative pulled out at the last minute because he said he was not given the chance to bring the agreement to the other residents for approval.

Agassiz residents were aware of the problems in the Mid-Cambridge negotiations, and stipulated that Harvard had to afford the community sufficient time to mull over the agreement before taking a vote. Some still complained that there was not enough time for their suggestions to be taken into account.

“I felt very strongly and stated it often throughout the process that we needed to go back to the neighborhood,” says Agassiz resident Miriam Goldberg, one of the members of the ACID negotiating team. “My understanding is that we did that in as many ways as we could...When you work with the community there will always be some individuals who feel they were not heard enough.”

Bloomstein says the neighborhood representatives in Agassiz tried to keep the community behind them in the process by holding periodic votes at neighborhood meetings—which he calls “sanity checks”—to make sure the residents still supported the direction of the negotiations.

ACID also conducted three community surveys over the course of two years, which Bloomstein says were used to gauge the residents’ priorities and establish the frameworks for the negotiations.

In Riverside, the city council, as the body responsible for approving zoning ordinances, played a much more direct role in the discussions, and several residents have expressed frustration about the process.

The talks in Riverside began when the city council established a study committee which met from fall 2000 to spring 2002. The committee developed the neighborhood rezoning petition, which Harvard opposed as being too restrictive.

Murphy and Councillor David P. Maher, the co-chairs of the council’s Ordinance Committee, met individually with Harvard officials, neighborhood residents and other council members last fall to try to reach a compromise.

“After the study committee work, I think we felt that we needed to take a look at the work that had been done, to talk to the individuals involved, to take what was motivating the work of the study group and then to try to present it to the University in a different way,” Murphy says.

In September, the month before a resolution was struck, residents complained to the city council that they were being left in the dark as councillors and Harvard officials met without them.

“I respect [Maher and Murphy] for taking the initiative and getting Harvard to sit down at the table, but I certainly disagree with the way the community was treated during the process,” Baumann says.

Residents credit several councillors, including Marjorie C. Decker and Anthony D. Galluccio, with helping the deal get done in the end by getting residents more involved in the discussion.

Wysoker says he realizes in hindsight that it may have been “inevitable” for Harvard and the councillors to have discussions without the residents.

“My job ought to be to make sure the city councillors are on my side, rather than trying to be at the table for all these discussions,” he says.

In addition to concerns about their role in the process, Riverside residents have criticized Harvard for what they describe as unfair tactics during the negotiations. They say the University was not prompt in its responses to neighbors’ requests, delaying the process at the end and leaving the residents without enough time to study the agreement carefully before they had to make a decision.

“I feel like Harvard has...more experienced negotiators and was able to manipulate the political situation very effectively,” Wysoker says. “Had we been able to be as sophisticated a negotiating team as Harvard was, we might have gotten more.”

Thomas J. Lucey, Harvard’s director of community relations for Cambridge, says the University could not always respond immediately because time was needed to coordinate its approach.

“It does take time sometimes to do some internal planning,” says Lucey, who came aboard last July. “When you deal with an institution of this size, there are lots of people involved in the decision.”

According to Murphy, the University made concessions over the course of negotiations, which he says demonstrates that the city was not outshone by the Harvard team.

Despite their criticisms of the process, Wysoker and Baumann offer cautious praise of the agreement itself—but some residents in Riverside remain dissatisfied with the outcome.

In April, Carlson filed a lawsuit against the nine councillors and City Manager Robert W. Healy, asserting that the city did not hold public hearings or conduct an appraisal of the land before granting an easement for Harvard to build a parking garage, the first step in the development of the area.

A Middlesex Superior Court judge dismissed the suit, but Carlson says he will keep fighting Harvard’s plans to construct large buildings next to his home.

He says he is not on good terms now with some of the other residents, viewing the agreement they negotiated as a “ridiculous deal” in which the wishes of the residents on his street were ignored so the rest of the neighborhood could reach a resolution.

Murphy refers to Carlson’s lawsuit as an example of the “range of views” that residents have about the Riverside agreement.

“There are some people, I don’t think they’d be happy unless Harvard Yard was torn down for community benefit,” he says.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Both residents and Harvard officials agree that signing on the dotted line did not wrap up the issues in either Agassiz or Riverside, but only represented the beginning of more work to be done to implement the deals.

Even the residents who support the pacts say they are still waiting to see if the promises will be kept—reflecting the deep-rooted suspicions of Harvard that residents harbor after years of town-gown battles.

“There is an opportunity here for Harvard to begin to melt that distrust, and obviously some distrust has melted or we would never have had the agreement,” Bloomstein says of the Agassiz deal. “It took an enormous leap of faith by the community to sign this agreement.”

In Riverside, the lingering vexation with the negotiating process remains in the forefront of residents’ minds.

“I don’t think that this agreement fosters trust,” Wysoker says. “I think Harvard wanted something and it realized that it had to give something up to get it. It tried to figure out how to give up as little as it could in order to get what it wanted.”

Stone calls the Riverside agreement a “remarkable, positive moment” but says it takes time to move beyond decades of distrust.

“This deal goes a long way toward the beginning of much different relationship, but it would be unrealistic to expect [the distrust] to be all gone,” he says.

And residents across the city continue to argue that Harvard, with its hefty endowment and 189 acres of tax-exempt property, could do more to assist its host city. The University contributes a voluntary payment in lieu of taxes currently set at $1.7 million, and Stone says Harvard and city officials are making “slow but steady progress” on a renewed agreement.

Despite the residents’ continued gripes, Murphy says he believes Harvard is doing a better job communicating with the surrounding neighborhoods.

“I think that the relationship’s getting better in both directions. I think that there’s probably a greater openness,” Murphy says. “There’s almost inevitably going to be tension in the relationship when you’re dealing with a city that’s as dense and built up as Cambridge.”

As Harvard officials seek to build on the agreements and develop closer ties with Cantabrigians, they will also face significant challenges in Allston, where the University has outlined plans to build a new campus with science facilities, professional schools and undergraduate housing.

Just as in Cambridge, Harvard continues to work to overcome the weight of history across the river.

Boston politicians and residents were outraged by the University’s announcement in 1997 that it had secretly purchased 52 acres of land in Allston.

“That’s absurd,” Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino told the Boston Globe at the time. “Without informing anyone or telling anybody? That’s total arrogance.”

Harvard found itself in another spat last year when residents and politicians objected to the purchase of a 91-acre parcel of land from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.

While Cambridge has a mayor chosen from within the city council’s ranks to fill a largely ceremonial position, Boston has a strong mayor and an agency dedicated to neighborhood planning, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which means Harvard will be working with a different political system in its relations with Allston.

But Stone says the University will try to apply some of the same elements that worked in Cambridge, such as offering generous benefits, being forthcoming and coordinating internal planning.

“Not surprising them ever is, I think, a cardinal rule,” he adds.

Harvard announced earlier this month that it hired a team led by the New York-based firm Cooper, Robertson & Partners to develop a master plan for Allston. The firm will base its work on the reports of Faculty task forces, as well as the report from a community task force, expected to be released this summer.

Kathy A. Spiegelman, chief University planner and director of the Allston Initiative, says the residents’ concerns for Allston match well with the University’s interests.

“We’ve found a lot of common ground with the things that the neighborhood and the city would like to see with regard to physical improvements and economic development and the kinds of things that the Faculty task forces are pointing us towards,” she says.

Ray Mellone, chair of the community task force, says the neighborhood report will provide a framework for the planning firm to take into account.

“We have to rely on the good-faith efforts of everybody to agree to abide by those principles,” he says. “If the new folks that they hire are unwilling to follow that, then I guess there will be a lot of discussion about why they can’t go forward with those kinds of things.”

Stone says the community planning process will parallel Harvard’s own internal planning.

“I can’t see a scenario where there won’t be a great deal of engagement with the community,” he says.

As Harvard has learned from Cambridge, it’s crucial to care about what the neighbors think.

—Lauren R. Dorgan contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Jessica R. Rubin-Wills can be reached at rubinwil@fas.harvard.edu.