In Summers, Allston Finds Its Strongest Ally

Another year has passed and Harvard’s campus of the future remains criss-crossed by railroad tracks and dotted with gas stations, auto body shops and an abandoned truck yard.

More than 100 acres of Harvard’s undeveloped land in Allston were left relatively untouched.

But while the status quo prevailed on the ground, at the highest levels of University administration, planning for Allston took on a new urgency.

It began with a talking campaign and with it, presidential prioritization. University President Lawrence H. Summers said early in the year that a campus in Allston will be one of his lasting legacies.

Talk was followed by a new planning process centered around faculty committees and focused on three possible models for Allston.

And this summer, data collection will begin in earnest to prepare for preliminary recommendations, due next winter, on the future of Harvard’s land in Allston.

Talking It Up

From nearly the first day of his administration, Summers approached Allston with his strongest weapon—the bully pulpit.

Allston would be high on his agenda, Summers said, and a new campus will represent one of his biggest legacies.

“If we make the right choices, if we take full advantage of a physical opportunity across the river in Allston—an opportunity to create a campus that is several times as large as this whole yard—we will have earned the gratitude of future generations,” Summers said in his Tercentenary Theatre installation speech.

Throughout the year, Summers elaborated on what those choices meant.

In his first meetings with Law School administrators and faculty, Summers made it clear that the school would have to consider a move to Allston, despite a prior faculty vote to the contrary.

Summers stressed in meetings with deans, faculty and planners across the University that the planning was starting from square one, and that no options for Allston could be definitively ruled out.

And he often said—again with the Law School in mind—that any future building in Cambridge will have to take into account all possible uses of Allston.

“What I have made clear to each of the schools is that this is so salient and large an opportunity that, while we have not made any decision about how [the land] will be used, all major planning decisions from this point forward will have to contemplate how they will work out under different scenarios for Allston,” Summers said last summer.

Building projects in the North Yard—such as those called for by the Law School’s long range plans—could only be undertaken after assurances that they would not prohibit a move to Allston.

At the same time that Summers’ rhetoric on Allston heated up, the pressures driving the University toward Allston grew more acute.

There was little relief to overcrowding in space-crunched Cambridge this year and the prospect for relief in the immediate future remained grim.

The planned Center for Government and International Studies—which would allow the economics and government departments to continue to grow—remained bogged down in community committees. Administrators said it became increasingly clear that Allston—not Cambridge—will have to be the solution to the University’s space woes.

The poor prospects in Cambridge may have helped in opening professors’ minds to the prospects raised by Allston. A Law School committee created at Summers’ request is said to have thought creatively about the opportunities across the river.

As a year of talk draws to a close, it appeared to have had an effect.

“People realize that [Allston] is a serious issue for the University, that has to be considered from a University-wide point of view,” said Beneficial Professor of Law Charles Fried. “Summers did what he had to do.”

Walking the Walk

Neither beefed up rhetoric nor strengthened impetus for a move is enough to make a massive new campus a reality.

Needs must be assessed, goals must be identified, infrastructure must be studied—then someday blueprints can be drawn.

Before Summers’ arrival, work on these initiatives crept along at a snail’s pace. Two years ago, a committee had recommended that Allston be developed as an academic campus, not simply a dumping ground for overcrowded Cambridge as originally imagined.

But with much of the University’s administration waiting on the results of last year’s presidential search, Allston planning remained on the back burner.

But now there is a timetable and process in place to immediately address these matters.

A central body for planning efforts has been reconstituted and given new prominence.

In its current incarnation, the University Committee on Physical Planning consists of 17 faculty and administrators representing Harvard’s schools, museums and central administration.

It was this committee in its prior form that made the original recommendation that Allston be used for an academic campus.

Ultimately, the President and Corporation will make the final decisions on Allston—setting timetables, authorizing building and deciding who will move.

But in the meantime, it will be this committee that will study the University’s options and coordinate the necessary legwork. The committee will help to compile the raw data that will inform an ultimate recommendation to Summers and the Corporation.

Senior Advisor to the President Dennis F. Thompson, who chairs the body, said the committee will for the first time consider specific plans for land use in both Cambridge and Allston, focusing on three alternatives for Allston development.

One, referred to as the “culture and community” model, Thompson said, focuses on Allston as a space for new graduate student dorms and museums moved out of Cambridge.

While the committee will be treating this model as a separate scenario, housing and cultural contributions to Allston will be part of any final plan, Thompson said.

The Corporation voted this year on a preliminary plan to build enough new dorms in the next 10 years to house 50 percent of the University’s graduate students. Currently, slightly under 40 percent of these students are housed in Harvard-owned buildings.

According to Thompson, many of the new rooms will be built in Allston.

A second scenario, the professional school model, calls for the consolidation of a number of the University’s graduate schools in a new campus across the river. This is the plan that the Law School faculty had objected to but has been told to reconsider.

Added to the mix is a third model—a plan for science in Allston that has gained prominence since Summers’ arrival.

Summers dreams of Boston as a hub for biomedical science research (see related story, page C-10), and the enormous space needs of the biological sciences come together around this scenario.

Thompson said science in Allston could mean anything from moving Faculty of Arts and Sciences departments across the river to building new interdisciplinary labs and a science park.

While the committee decided to focus on the three scenarios, “they also made clear that a mixed model is more likely in the end,” Thompson said.

A Head of Steam

Since the physical planning committee’s first meeting in February, work on Allston has continued in earnest.

Two outside consultant groups have been selected to help with overall planning for Allston. One firm will focus on academics, surveying institutional needs across the University.

A second firm will help with the technical aspects, conducting studies of the physical sites in Allston and examining the renovation potential of existing buildings, among other tasks.

This second firm has considerable experience in campus development, Thompson said, having played a part in planning for the University of California, San Francisco’s new Mission Bay science campus.

And four new faculty advisory groups have been created to help identify crucial questions and data regarding each scenario.

The groups will report back to the entire physical planning committee next winter.

—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.