Spanning the Charles

Several progress reports released over the past year reinforced the broad components of the University’s plan for an Allston campus centered around undergraduate housing, science facilities, and graduate schools, while for the first time adding concrete details to the proposals.

A year after Harvard hired Cooper, Robertson & Partners to create a master plan for Allston, the firm released an interim report on June 2 which collected and discussed many of the concepts that University planners had raised over the last year.

This followed April’s release of the Allston Science and Technology Task Force’s report calling for the construction in Allston of two 500,000-square-foot science complexes, which will house interdisciplinary research and new initiatives like the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

In addition to suggesting possible areas for the science buildings, Cooper, Robertson’s report outlines scenarios for incorporating new graduate and undergraduate housing, relocation of the Graduate School of Education and the School of Public Health, a strengthened river crossing, and improvements to the Allston community.

All of the proposals for founding Houses in Allston place a total of 1,500 undergraduates close to the Charles River, in some cases directly facing Cambridge’s River Houses.

David McGregor, the firm’s managing director, emphasized when the report was released that it was still too early to begin thinking about specific building designs or choosing among the suggested locations.

“There are a lot of decisions that can’t be known today,” he said.

Harvard’s plans for Allston over the last year have seldom come with specific timetables, and the formulation of a master plan, which Harvard must undertake before its expansion, could take years.

The next step in that process will occur this fall, as University officials present the interim report to faculty, students, and community members.

University President Lawrence H. Summers said earlier this month that the Allston planning has “given us a great deal to think about...in terms of long-run possibilities none of us will probably ever have a chance to see.”

TRANSPORTING UNDERGRADUATES

The idea of locating undergraduate Houses in Allston is not new. In May 2004, a University task force recommended building up to eight Houses across the river, which would have included up to 3,000 undergraduates.

The new report plots only four Houses in Allston, at 375 students per house. The first new Houses would replace other undergraduate housing, even though later Houses might expand the College’s student body.

“Growing the students is not a first-stage issue,” Summers said earlier this month.

Although Harvard’s property in Allston extends as far south as I-90, the latest report confirmed that planning for new Houses is focused entirely on the Charles River, in some cases replacing existing buildings there.

Two of the plans call for Houses to be built from scratch, either on present-day athletic fields north of Harvard Stadium or in empty fields near Weeks Footbridge on the HBS campus.

But other plans show existing buildings incorporated into Houses. One proposal would convert the HBS dormitories north of Baker Library; another would transform the One Western Avenue building into undergraduate housing.

The report also considers turning the $66 million One Western Avenue complex, which opened in the summer of 2003 and currently houses about 350 graduate students, into a hotel and conference center. Another candidate for such a center is the 15-story Doubletree Guest Suites hotel near I-90, which Harvard purchased in January for a reported $75 million.

But whatever the eventual designs for Allston Houses, planners say that connections between the Allston and Cambridge campuses must be strengthened.

It now takes about 20 minutes to walk from Harvard Yard to Barry’s Corner, the intersection of North Harvard Street and Western Avenue, where science and graduate school facilities will be located in the future.

Cars and buses coming from Harvard Square must currently use the Larz Anderson Bridge to cross the Charles River, but the report looks closely at several proposals for making the crossing easier for pedestrians, bikers, cars, and rapid transit.

While two such plans would renovate the Larz Anderson Bridge and the Weeks Footbridge, others address the possibility of creating a new crossing. Building a bridge from Winthrop House’s two halls to the current HBS campus is one option. Another is extending the MBTA bus tunnel from Brattle Square to emerge near Harvard Stadium.

Although the report refers to shuttle buses running between the Cambridge and Allston campuses, Kathy Spiegelman, Harvard’s top planner, said that the mode of transit the College will use to transport students has not been decided.

GOOD NEIGHBORS?

But getting from Cambridge to Allston is only part of the challenge. Planners have also emphasized the need for improving transportation within the new campus—a concern that local residents share.

One of the Harvard report’s central recommendations is to remove the parallel parking on North Harvard Street, enlarging the road to accommodate separate bike and transit lanes.

“We’ve been advocating for a long time to remove parking on North Harvard Street,” says Paul Berkeley, the president of the Allston Civic Association, who says that suburban commuters park there and walk to Harvard Square to take the T downtown, leaving few spaces for Allston residents themselves.

The discussion over transportation is one example of the way in which residents see Harvard’s expansion as an opportunity to address some of their neighborhood’s problems and its distrust of Harvard.

Harvard’s concerted effort to expand its holdings in Allston dates back to at least 1988, when Harvard began a secret 52-acre, $88 million buying spree. When Harvard disclosed those purchases in 1997, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino called it “total arrogance.” Even a Harvard spokesman called it a “breach of trust.”

While residents remain wary, they have since become engaged in the planning process with Harvard.

The North Allston Neighborhood Strategic Planning Group, which included Harvard officials and community representatives, released a report in December focusing on the ways in which Harvard’s development could be integrated with the surrounding neighborhood.

The community’s report, as well as Cooper, Robertson’s preliminary report, spotlighted Barry’s Corner as the future cultural nexus between the campus and the Allston neighborhoods to the south.

But the plans hinge on the availability of a wedge of land at the intersection, where the 213-unit Charlesview apartment complex is currently situated.

Though some of the plans in Harvard’s interim report show laboratories, cultural attractions, or graduate facilities where Charlesview is now, Harvard does not currently own that land.

The University is negotiating with Charlesview’s owners to build a new complex elsewhere in Allston-Brighton and move its tenants there. Although the fate of the apartment complex rests ultimately with its owners, a group of 30 tenants held a meeting in January and demanded to have a seat at the negotiating table.

SCIENCE EXPERIMENT

The only indication of timing in the June interim report is a map that divides Harvard’s holdings in Allston into one portion that will be available in the next five years and another portion that will be constrained for more than five years.

That first category includes present Harvard buildings and fields but also some tenants whose leases expire before 2010, according to Spiegelman. WGBH, a public television station next to HBS on Western Avenue, is one of those tenants.

As the University moves toward development, science appears to be at the top of the agenda. Provost Steven E. Hyman, the chair of the science task force, told The Crimson in April that the first building will include space for chemical biology, systems biology, and engineering, in addition to stem cell research. The report did not provide details on the timetable, location, or cost of the construction, though Cooper, Robertson’s report in June did highlight several possible sites for these laboratories, clustered near Barry’s Corner.

Summers said earlier this month that he “would not be surprised” to see a science lab among the earliest construction in the new campus.

But for now, he emphasized that Harvard’s task was to seek feedback before developing its master plan.

“We’re at a stage where I’m very much looking forward to getting reactions, questions, [and] concerns on the part of the many, many stakeholders in the process,” he said.

—Staff writer Brendan R. Linn can be reached at blinn@fas.harvard.edu.