Three Sides of the Power Plant

Beseiged by a policy of uncoordinated and uncontrolled expansion from the Harvard Medical School, the Mission Hill community of Boston is squaring away for a fight that will decide the future survival of the community. As Harvard moves relentlessly forward to build one of the largest and most costly construction projects in the history of the city, Mission Hill residents find themselves overwhelmed by the power and determination of the University. Where now stand three-decker houses with families there will soon stand--if Harvard gets its way--a towering energy plant that will compete with those of Boston Edison. Moving carefully through the neighborhood. Harvard has bought up large amounts of housing which it then allows to deteriorate and then destroys. Tenants and home-owners give way to broken glass, falling plaster, and soon a "blighted" area. This strategy of premeditated blight is at the moment one of Harvard's major weapons in its fight to take over the Hill for the expansion of its medical territory. In the wake of this destruction Harvard plans three large projects which together represent the third or fourth biggest development that Boston has seen.

Two hundred and twenty million dollars is what Harvard, its umbrella organization, MASCO, and their affiliates plan to spend over the next four or five years for a package project of the power plant, a housing project, and the Affiliated Hospitals Center. The Harvard/MASCO plan will have an impact on the people in Boston that is almost unparalleled in urban development. It is one thing to replace a section of commercial downtown with similar commercial construction it is quite another to move $220 million worth of construction smack into the middle of an established neighborhood when most of that money will be spent on things which will serve that community in no way at all. Harvard plans to spend $50 million on its power plant, $130 million on the hospital tower, and only $40 million of state money on housing. All of this over the next three to five years. The impact of that much on this community in that span of time is impossible to predict or overestimate.

For its share of the $220 million, Harvard will receive enormous tax concessions which it claims make many of its plans feasible. But in a city which has the highest tax rate in the entire country it seems reckless and ill-advised to lose large sums of tax revenue. The proposed total energy plant alone represents an annual tax loss of almost three million dollars a year. If Boston Edison were to provide the power, taxes on that would bring in about four million a year, but Harvard will pay only $1.1 million annually into public coffers.

The issues are clear and crucial; loss of significant tax revenue, the conscious creation of urban blight, the annihilation of an entire neighborhood, a significant increase in pollution and the dangerously uncontrolled expansion of an institution. Public awareness of this huge plan is mysteriously low; press and media interest is almost non-existent; and yet in only a few short weeks Harvard plans to break ground for what could be the beginning of unchecked expansion on Mission Hill.

MASCO--the Medical Area Service Corporation--is basically a front for Harvard. It is Harvard's baby, and Harvard's tool for consolidating and expanding its control over the hospitals and related medical institutions.

Meanwhile the state agencies like the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the Department of Public Utilities, the Office of Environmental Affairs, etc., who are paid by our taxes, have either helped Harvard's advance or have turned a deal ear to our concerns.

So as always we are left to fight our own battles. And let Harvard and the BRA make no mistake about it: fight we will Mission Hill has not only wised up to what's happening, but how it's happening; and this time we're going to win. And the first step in winning means no total energy plan; on Mission Hill