Community activists say that abandoned projects blighted their neighbourhood
(BOSTON) Harvard University has provoked protest and confrontation in a nearby Boston neighbourhood where the school is backing away from plans to build housing and laboratories on land that it took years to buy.
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| Locked up: A padlocked fence surrounding a vacant, unfinished building owned by Harvard University in the Allston neighbourhood of Boston |
Community activists in Allston, a section of Boston across the Charles River from Harvard’s main campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, say that university delays have left a ‘blighted’ neighbourhood of vacant businesses, stalled construction sites and invading rats.
Harvard president Drew Faust said in an announcement in February that construction of a US$1 billion science centre in Allston would be slowed because of a ‘bleak’ economic outlook.
Harry Mattison, a member of the Allston Brighton North Neighbors Forum, said that his group will fight a real estate swap that would give Harvard land next to its campus in Allston unless the university develops more of its unused property.
‘They’ve been showing us all these renderings for more than a decade of how wonderful this neighbourhood is going to be,’ Mr Mattison said. ‘Now, they’re shifting their focus elsewhere, and the blue- collar residents of Allston are left holding the bag, living with the mistake Harvard made by purchasing all this land.’
If Harvard’s neighbours are not satisfied with the plan for the new housing complex, they can oppose re-zoning needed for the project, possibly through the courts, said Jessica Shumaker, a spokeswoman for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which oversees city planning.
Sweeping vision
Four years ago, former Harvard president Lawrence Summers announced a sweeping vision of Allston, home to about 20,000 people, as ‘a completely integral extension of the university’. In June, 2008, the school released pictures of the science centre, surrounded by trees. Continue reading
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