An Unexpected Snag

Harvard's community relations department should have expected it; everything was going much too easily.

The University Place condominium/office complex--often touted as a model of Harvard-community cooperation--hit its first serious snag last week when the city's Historical Commission voted to designate two buildings scheduled for demolition as "historically significant."

The designation, made at the request of more than 50 neighbors, blocks destruction of the two buildings--134 Mt. Auburn St. and 3 Mt. Auburn Place--for at least six months, well past the March 1 date slated for the start of construction on the $25 million project.

If work is to begin before that time, some compromise will have to be worked out; either the buildings will be moved to some other site, or construction plans will be altered to leave them intact.

"I don't think it will affect the timing, but how it will affect the nature of the project remains to be discussed," Jack Griefen, a Boston partner of Gerlad Hines Co., the company building the complex under contract to Harvard, said yesterday.

Griefen explained that the blueprints may be redrawn to "allow us to work around the problem."

In the meantime, Griefen and Harvard officials said, negotiations with neighbors will continue in an effort to head off problems.

Harvard and Hines apparently had not anticipated problems with the demolition of the buildings; plans circulated among neighborhood leaders in the last six months showed the new development on top of the site of the two 19th century homes.

But Laurence Wylie, Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France Emeritus and a leader of the fight to block the demolitions; said in a letter to The Crimson this week that "ordinary citizens had no chance of being [aware] of Harvard's plans until the demolition notice went up.

"Just offhand, it is not clear to an ordinary person how this tremendous complex must await the destruction of these two little buildings."