FAS Dean Plans House Renewal Announcement

Updated 8:52 p.m.

Two months after acknowledging that the renovation of Harvard’s undergraduate Houses could be delayed beyond the anticipated 2012 start date, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences said he is planning a major announcement as early as next month on the status of and plans for House renewal.

FAS Dean Michael D. Smith declined to comment on the nature of the announcement during an interview last week, saying, “We hope to release new information about House renewal in January.”

The new announcement could answer questions about the funding, timeline, and scope of the renovations.

While Smith had said in November that the announcement would be ready by this month, last week he said that the extra month is needed to help finalize some of the details.

“There are a lot of pieces that have to come together before we can make an announcement,” he said.

Announced in 2008, House renewal is an ambitious project that aims to dramatically overhaul the physical structure of Harvard's 12 residential Houses. Although the tentative start date for the project has hovered around 2012, FAS administrators have said that the start of House renewal will depend on the availability of funding.

As recently as October during a Faculty meeting, Smith did not offer a start date for the project and cited funding availability as a factor that would help determine when the project would begin, opening the door to the possibility that the project would not start by 2012.

While the contents of next month’s announcement remain unclear, there are a number of still-unanswered questions the announcement could address, including the funding sources and fundraising strategy for the project, the details of the renovation schedule, and the location for any relocation of students.

According to Smith, Houses with Neo-Georgian architecture–which include six full Houses and portions of Quincy and Leverett–will be a priority when determining the order of renovations, but he added that there is “no fixed order” at this time as to which Houses will be addressed first. Smith said that all of the Houses will eventually participate in the renewal projects but declined to comment further on the exact timeline and order for the plan.

Smith said House renewal would be a priority in the FAS’s next capital campaign.

The timing of the individual projects and the location of the “swing housing”–where students will be housed while their individual House is undergoing renovations–remain up in the air. Smith said that finding solutions that minimize disruption to student life would be a key part of the planning process.

"We're doing this because we're trying to improve the student experience,” Smith said, “We're trying to be very careful as we plan this.”

–Staff writer Stephanie B. Garlock can be reached at sgarlock@college.harvard.edu.