University Sells Property; Vineyard Residents Angry

Harvard sold 320 acres of prime Martha's Vineyard land to a Boston development company last year at a fraction of its market value, angering alumni and island residents.

Land-Vest, Ic. paid the University $620,000 in March 1973, for the tract of shorefront property in Chilmark. The company has already received $1.6 million from the sale of 33 of 49 house lots and it could gross as much as $2.4 million if prices hold up.

Real estate brokers estimate that Harvard could have gotten two to three times what Land-Vast paid for the land, which was willed to the University in 1969 by Charles Russell Lowell Putnam, a wealthy New York surgeon. Proceeds from the sale of the estate were to go to the Medical School.

The University passed up several offers from potential buyers who were willing to pay substantially more and restrict development more than Land-Vest, the Boston Sunday Globe reported yesterday.

What Harvard Is Up To

Gerald A. Berlin, a Boston attorney and long-time summer resident of Martha's Vineyard, said yesterday that he knew two individuals personally and had heard of a third, all of whom had made better offers than Land-Vest. "I'm curious as all mischief to find out what Harvard is up to," Berlin said.

The first offer for the land came in 1971 from Albert L. Cohn, a Law School alumnus and summer resident of the island. Cohn offered to pay $1.1 million and tentatively promised the Vineyard Open Land Foundation, a non-profit group interested in protecting the island from excessive development, that he would not build more than 27 houses on the property.

Eugene G. Kraetzer Jr. '29, who worked on the agreement as an assistant secretary to the Corporation, confirmed that Harvard had received offers of over $1 million. Although Kraetzer said last week that Cohn "never followed up on the thing," in a 1971 letter to Cohn's real estate broker he wrote that former treasurer of the Corporation George F. Bennett'33 was disappointed with Cohn's offer.

Hunneman & Co., Inc., the real estate firm that manages Harvard property, suggested Land-Vest to the University as a potential buyer, according to Land-Vest President Richard F. Perkins. An executive vice president of Hunneman, John W. Kunhardt '51--who died in July--also served on the Land-Vest board of directors, but Perkins denied that Kunhardt's position constituted a conflict of interest in the transaction.

Henry C. Meadow, associate dean of the Faculty of Medicine, said yesterday that "the Medical School had nothing to do with the deal" and the transaction was handled solely by the Corporation.

Members of the Corporation were unavailable for comment yesterday.

The Globe cited some observers as saying that the University limited serious consideration to a Harvard "old boy network." "I'd hate to think that," Meadow said, "but anything is possible after Watergate.