Harvard Sponsors Plans for Rejected JFK Museum Site

The Government and Community Affairs Office has joined with the Allston Civic Association in sponsoring housing development plans for land previously proposed as a site for the John F. Kennedy museum, an administration spokesman said yesterday.

Donald C. Moulton, assistant vice president for Community Affairs, said plans to build a residential housing complex on the 32-acre site in Allston result from the common desire of local residents and University officials to prevent the area from becoming over-industrialized.

New Image' Sought

The proposed development, still in the planning stage, would "establish a new residential image for Allston" by halting the spread of neighboring industrial areas and eliminating the use of nearby Western Avenue as a major route for commercial trucking, Moulton said.

Moulton added that the proposal would benefit the University by preventing the deterioration of the neighborhood surrounding the Business School.

Joseph Smith, president of the Allston Civic Association, said yesterday local residents suggested that a new plan be drawn up last November, after the proposal to build the Kennedy Museum in the area was rejected.

The decision to build the museum on the Columbia Point campus of the University of Massachusetts left local residents anxious to find another means of developing the area, Smith said.

A task force of Harvard officials and Allston residents subsequently recommended that the University hire an architect to compose a development plan which the group said would benefit both the community and the school.

Common Vested Interests

"It was a rare occasion, but our vested interests were the same in this case," Smith said.

Smith added that although the University paid for the architects' study, it agreed to allow the community final approval before the formal adoption of the plan.

The land, near the Penn Central railroad yards, was proposed last spring as the site for the museum after the Kennedy Library Corporation rejected the University's earlier plan to build both the museum and an archives building near the site of the now-abandoned MBTA subway yards in Cambridge.