Two Groups Weigh the Future of Harvard’s Allston Land

Last Thursday professors from Harvard Law School (HLS) presented their work on possible plans for the school’s expansion in Cambridge and Allston to the University administrators who will decide the school’s future location.

President Lawrence H. Summers, Provost Steven E. Hyman, Senior Adviser to the President Dennis F. Thompson and Harvard’s Associate Vice President for Planning and Real Estate Kathy A. Spiegelman gathered in Mass. Hall with the seven members of the Law School’s Locational Options Committee to hear their initial update on what connections tie HLS to its current campus and what factors may force it to change.

Professor of Law Elena Kagan, chair of the committee and a member of the University-wide Physical Planning Committee, presented the Law School committee’s research on the issues that have generated controversy among the school’s faculty for the past three years.

The committee—composed of six HLS faculty and HLS Dean of Administration Julie Englund—have examined the links between HLS and Harvard’s other schools to determine if they can’t afford to leave Cambridge and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) behind, or would benefit from joining a proposed new professional school campus in Allston.

After considering the long-term space needs of HLS, they have begun to consider the viability of spreading out from their Cambridge home, or picking up and moving across the river to Harvard’s vast new holdings in Allston.

Both sides said the meeting went well, but the future of the law school is far from settled. The HLS faculty has backed down from its past staunch opposition to an Allston move and is willing to consider plans, but its attitude remains very skeptical.

Kagan’s full report to the HLS faculty and Dean Robert C. Clark, due in June, will only present the information and options that will inform future decision-making.

“We’re nowhere near through with this exploration,” Kagan said. “It’s such a difficult question to ask where we’ll be 50 years from now.”

Expansion And Opposition

The committee has looked into options for creating space in the northwest corner of its current Cambridge campus by moving the Everett St. parking garage underground and by knocking down the North Hall dormitory on Mass. Ave.

In addition, the committee has been working with Harvard Planning and Real Estate to envision an HLS campus in Allston.

“We figure out what the University owns, who we would like our neighbors to be and what we would like the neighborhood to look like—site, acreage, density of buildings,” Kagan said.

The committee has been working with a University-hired consultant to conceive of the possibilities for the space.

The Allston options have figured as a major part of the committee’s plans, and created intense debate from the faculty, Kagan said.

At three workshops over the past four months, the committee has presented its work to the HLS faculty.

While the majority of faculty have remained very skeptical of physical expansion and growth plans according to Kagan, she said she had been “very encouraged” by the “lively discussions” that occurred in the faculty workshops.

“I think the law school as a whole is committed to [the committee’s work],” Kagan said.

Even skeptical consideration of the Allston option is a major step for the HLS faculty, which voted nearly unanimously in fall 1999 to stay put.

Faculty opposition to a move in the past has centered around a reluctance to abandon the historical connections between HLS and its Cambridge campus.

A new campus in Allston would cost HLS its proximity to FAS and Harvard Yard, and Beneficial Professor of Law Charles Fried described Allston as “not a particularly attractive setting for a campus.”

The committee has been working to assess the connections between HLS and the other Harvard schools to inform decisions about whether HLS should remain close to FAS, or, if it moves to Allston as part of a proposed professional school campus, which schools should go with it.

The committee is looking into both student and faculty connections with Harvard’s other schools in Cambridge. They are gathering statistics, such as the number of law students who cross-register at other schools, the number of faculty who teach at other schools or the number of visits law school members make to other Harvard libraries.

“We’re trying to get the faculty’s sense of where their connections are, who are the people they engage with, how many people have connections outside the law school that are integral,” Kagan said.

Concerns about the possible future locations of FAS science facilities have also been raised in discussions among faculty and administrators about the future of law school, according to HLS Communications Director Michael A. Armini.

One potential problem noted was the existence of an underground river in Allston that could make it an unsuitable location for future science labs, potentially making it necessary for any expansion of the FAS science facilities to take place on the HLS campus.

Although there is a high water table in Allston, and science buildings might have different foundation requirements than other buildings, there is probably not a significant difference between what could be built in Allston and Cambridge, according to Spiegelman.

On the other hand, the Red Line runs underneath HLS between Harvard and Porter Squares, leading some to suggest that vibrations from the T would make the site unsuitable for precise scientific experiments, according to Armini.

A lot of scientific research in Cambridge, however, takes place near the T, Spiegelman said.

The Space Crunch

The committee’s work on new locational options is part of HLS’ attempt to solve its desperate need for classroom, office and dorm space.

The committee is looking at the state of current HLS facilities and how they will accommodate HLS’ future plans.

In the course of their research, the committee has estimated that HLS will need 300,000 to 350,000 square feet of total space.

HLS has already moved into two new buildings away from its campus north of Harvard Yard. Some administrative offices and research programs such as the Civil Rights Project now operate out of buildings at 124 and 125 Mt. Auburn St.

This aspect of the committee’s exploration is closely linked with the HLS strategic plan, approved last year by faculty to address the school’s most pressing issues by expanding and improving programs with financing from a $400 million capital campaign.

The strategic plan’s calls to hire 15 additional permanent faculty, create more student space and expand research programs would all required more space.

Based on the strategic plan and past growth patterns in HLS history, the committee has tried to project the school’s space needs in 20 years, according to Kagan.

HLS is already a much larger school that its major competitors—Yale and Stanford. In the past, some faculty have raised concerns about further expansion. But the need for expansion is now generally accepted by the faculty, according to Kagan.

But possibly standing in the way of any such expansion in Cambridge is the presence of a pair of official-designated historic buildings on the HLS campus.

Gropius—an old dorm whose rooms Kagan referred to as “jail cell” style—is a major example of the international modern architectural style and cannot be torn down without going through a long and complicated set of procedures, including approval from the Cambridge Historical Commission.

The HLS student center Harkness Commons is also historical.

The two buildings are a major obstacle to expansion and adaptability on the law school campus.

“The most you could do is gut the inside,” Kagan said.

—Staff writer Stephanie M. Skier can be reached at skier@fas.harvard.edu.