On a tour given by four Harvard Real Estate representatives last week, the Crimson was shown both currently utilized units and two prototypes for the renovated units. Keller, Cornell, HRE communications Director Dianne Dyslin and HRE Director Kristin S. Demong guided the tour through the three 22-story buildings.

The occupied units shown during the tour demonstrated the effect of thirty years of wear. The tiled floors were cracked and flaking. The painting, although redone between occupants, had developed jagged cracks. A draft blew through ill-fitting windows, and most of the lighting came from outside.

One room, meant to be a one-person studio, had a cot behind a four-foot tall wall of partitions where the occupant's son slept.

Harvard Real Estate has presented an ambitious plan to fix these long-standing problems. Keller, the Terrace's manager, says the project has three goals: first, to make the kitchen and storage space "feel more like the '90's;" second, to increase livable space; and finally, to repair the plumbing system that has suffered from years of coping with disposal systems it was not designed to handle.

According to Keller, each individual unit will undergo changes in five areas that were identified with the help of a council of tenants as problem areas.

*New kitchen cabinets will be installed, along with new countertops. Refrigerators will be moved into nearby closets to make more space in the kitchen, and general cabinets will be added in the remaining closet space.

*A boudoir will be added to the bedrooms to better utilize a heating element already in place.

*The bathroom walls will be re-tiled and new medicine cabinets will be added.

*All floors will be re-tiled.

*The windows, which have been described by tenants as "causing drafts and sticky" will be replaced by double-paned storm windows.

Keller says the speed of the renovations was one of the main factors in determining which changes would be made. She says the six groups hired by Barr & Barr Contractors will work on the project simultaneously so all the rooms can be completed before new tenants arrive in September.

Barr & Barr would not comment on the job for this story.

According to Keller, the contractors have timed every procedure that will be part of the renovation in order to minimize the amount of time the units are off the market.

"We are working in a very small time frame," Keller says. "We want to have the units ready for next year's residents in September."

Since there is a limited amount of time to effect the changes, certain furnishings, including the kitchen cabinets, were selected because they could be installed quickly.