Allston Housing Battle May Loom

In a blow to Harvard’s efforts to take over the site of the Charlesview Apartments in Allston, the apartments’ owners said in a statement yesterday that they were seriously considering opposing the move of the 213-unit complex.

For nearly three years, Harvard and the Charlesview Board of Directors have discussed an arrangement in which Harvard would construct a new building for Charlesview residents elsewhere, in exchange for Charlesview’s current site at the corner of North Harvard St. and Western Ave. The land has been touted as a space for either graduate school buildings or a cultural facility in Harvard’s future campus across the Charles River.

But yesterday’s announcement is a sign that the Board is frustrated by the slow pace of negotiations and by an internal disagreement with Charlesview residents. Harvard has offered to relocate the residents to two locations, but neither site has been fully embraced by Charlesview tenants.

“Each day that passes further delays the creation of new homes for our residents,” Father Justinian Manning, the vice chairman of the Charlesview Board, said in a statement. “We are not ending our discussions with Harvard—we are just moving forward aggressively on a parallel track.”

Nevertheless, an open meeting tonight in which residents and the Board planned to listen to presentations by four architectural firms contending to design a new Charlesview complex was cancelled.

Chief University Planner Kathy Spiegelman did not respond to two calls for comment yesterday afternoon. And University spokeswoman Lauren Marshall would not comment on how the Charlesview Board’s announcement would impact the negotiations.

“We continue to work hard to find a mutually acceptable solution and look forward to continuing our constructive discussions with the Charlesview community,” she said.

Representatives for Charlesview said two recent developments had prompted the decision to reconsider a land swap with Harvard.

After the lukewarm response to Harvard’s two previous offers of land to construct a new apartment complex—on several plots at the corner of Soldiers Field Road and Western Ave. and an area near the Brighton Mills Shopping Center—Harvard was expected to make another offer in September. But no new offer has been made.

Last week, a group of Charlesview residents filed a complaint with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) charging that tenants were not being included in the Board’s negotiations with Harvard.

Board Vice Chairman Manning said that this dispute was diverting time from negotiations with Harvard.

“We will not continue to battle a small group of residents, and therefore it’s looking like its time to move on, for the sake of all of our residents,” Manning said in the statement.

Debby Giovanditto, the president of the Charlesview Residents Organization, the group that filed the HUD complaint, said that the Board’s comments were an example of the Board’s “holier than thou” attitude.

Felicia Jacques, a consultant who has been negotiating with Harvard for the Charlesview Board, wrote in an e-mail that the Board’s primary concern was to ensure that living conditions for residents improved.

“This is not a negotiating tactic,” she wrote. “The buildings are 40 years old and need attention to sustain their viability as an affordable housing resource. A new construction option from a land swap is one way to resolve this, if this is not possible, we must look to fortifying the current structure at its current location.”

—Staff writer Joseph M. Tartakoff can be reached at tartakof@fas.harvard.edu.