Harvard’s Arboretum Expansion Plan Hypocritical

To the editors:



Re “Arboretum Assailed Over Plans for Land,” news, May 12:

It is ironic that Harvard University is resisting neighborhood calls to limit institutional development at the Arnold Arboretum, because Harvard itself opposed institutional development at the Arboretum’s doorstep at least two times in recent memory.

Fifty years ago, Harvard’s attorney tried to stop institutional development on Centre Street at the West Roxbury/Jamaica Plain/Roslindale border. When Joyce Kilmer Park and its nine acres of open space were sold for a new institutional facility in 1956, Harvard’s attorney argued that institutional development at the site would encroach on open space at the Arboretum’s adjacent parcel.

Forty years ago, when the city examined the possibility of building a public high school across from Forest Hills Station and adjacent to the Arboretum, it was Harvard that objected, saying that any such institutional development at its doorstep would encroach on open space at the Arboretum next door.

Now, Harvard wants to plant a new institutional complex on Centre Street on open space that is not zoned for institutional uses. Institutional creep along the Centre Street corridor means the loss of open space and more congested roads during rush hours. Therefore, no new complexes should be permitted at Centre and Weld Streets unless Harvard agrees to permanent protection of open space as a natural buffer between institutions and surrounding neighborhoods. What we ask of Harvard today is actually more of a compromise than what Harvard demanded from its neighbors 40 and 50 years before.



WAYNE BEITLER

Roslindale, Mass.

May 16, 2006



The writer is president of the Longfellow Area Neighborhood Association.