With plenty of money in its coffers--$15.2 billion to be exact--Harvard has forged ahead this year with ambitious construction plans, while nabbing what space it could on both sides of the Charles River.

With a bit of foresight and 14 years of patience, the College managed to acquire the Hasty Pudding Building this year without paying a dime for the three-story Holyoke Street structure.

Undergraduate leaders have expressed high hopes for the new space, which they see as an answer to the oft-cited lack of performance, social and office space for students on campus.

Harvard also plodded along with local development projects that have yet to meet Cambridge community approval. Until Harvard can begin to win neighborhood support for such construction, the space crunch on campus is expected to continue.

Pudding in its Place

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) negotiated an agreement April 4 with the graduate board of the Institute of 1770--the governing board of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, Krokodiloes and Pitches--to take ownership of the Pudding building.

FAS will soon foot the bill for massive renovations to the dilapidated building--by some accounts, likely a $10 million undertaking.

Undergraduate Council members have viewed the building as a potential answer to their pleas for a student center in recent years.

"It would be a shame if the council didn't take advantage of the opportunity," Council President Fentrice D. Driskell '01said shortly after the deal was announced.

According to David P. Illingworth '71, associate dean of the College, the building will be renovated and the theater refurbished completely for undergraduate use.

"The theater will continue to be a theater; we're going to improve it. The rest of the building, we are less certain about, maybe rehearsal space, social space or [student] offices," he said. "It's definitely going to be for students. It's not going to be teaching space."

The institute had long been in arrears to Harvard and did not have the funds to keep up the aging Pudding building or pay the back rent owed to Harvard for the land on which the building sat.

The building was assessed at a value of $1,449,100 in 1999. Harvard will forgive the institute's debt to the University as part of the agreement.

Illingworth said FAS would be willing to invest money--on the order of $25,000--to bring the building up to code if it meant undergraduates would be able to use the space next year.

But the building is in serious disrepair, and the College has hired an independent contractor to conduct a safety inspection.

If the contractor identifies hazards that would cost a large amount of money to repair, Illingworth said the College would close the building next year--shutting the Pudding building down for two years and leaving all the construction for a single period of renovation.