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.