Charlesview Plan Awaits Approval

The Charlesview Apartments, a concrete cluster of 213 low-income housing units near Harvard’s long-envisioned Allston campus hub, stands in desolate disrepair. A few children clatter by on scooters while an elderly woman, accompanied by a young mother pushing a baby stroller, loiters in the mostly deserted courtyard.

“It’s quiet. It’s a nice place to bring up children,” says Ruth Olivole, who has lived at the complex for 15 years. “I don’t want to move. Period.”

But her younger companion disagrees, and indeed, Olivole seems to be more the exception than the rule in opposing the planned relocation of the apartments to a site half a mile west.

“I’m so sick of waiting,” said Phyllis Lingley, 83, at a recent community input meeting. “This has been going on for years, and we haven’t seen a damn thing built.”

Now, with the City’s approval for the Harvard-backed plan to relocate the Charlesview Apartments hinging largely on the community’s support, renewed opposition to the proposal’s design may set back residents’ hopes yet again.

A LONG DEBATE

A 2007 land swap agreement between Harvard and the Charlesview board of directors was intended to allow the University to consolidate its Allston land holdings while providing residents with much-desired new housing and amenities.

Yet planning for what would seem to be a mutually beneficial arrangement has dragged on to its sixth year, and many Charlesview dwellers are saying that their patience has been tested enough and that construction should commence.

“Get us out of here soon! Don’t take so long,” said Michelle Davis, a resident who has lived at Charlesview for four years.

Charlesview and its contracted real estate developers, the Community Builders, first floated to Harvard the idea of a land swap and apartment relocation in 2003. Several years passed before the agreement was finalized, and the plan has since floundered in a City review process that includes extensive provisions for revision before ultimate approval. A new and improved draft, now undergoing a period of community input and review, is finally nearing a long-awaited green-light from City planners.

But again, complications have emerged.

A vocal and influential contingent of Allston residents, arguing that the plan does not include enough opportunities for home ownership, say that the project strays from established principles of urban design and will create an income-segregated North Allston neighborhood. While Harvard agreed to give nearly two more acres of land to the project to help address those concerns, some local residents maintain that the University ought to allocate even more land to the Charlesview development and surrounding areas, rather than letting the property sit vacant.

But according to Susan S. Fainstein, a leading figure in urban planning and a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the current draft of the Charlesview plan is “well-designed” and includes an appropriate level of density and open space. She says that she believes the plan should be approved as soon as possible, and that the potential hindrance posed by the Allston residents’ concerns could be in part due to a class-based conflict of interests.

“You have a group of low income people who are under stress and a group of higher income people who probably aren’t so anxious to have these tenants to live with them. A lot of the delay might be a reflection of that,” Fainstein says.

RELOCATION COMPLICATIONS

Community leaders are eager to move the project along.

“I feel very good about the current plan, and I think the residents do as well,” says Reverend Samuel M. Johnson, chair of the Charlesview board. “I think timing is more important than trying to tinker this or make it better.”

Ironically, Charlesview residents were once among the most vocal critics of the relocation plan.

The 213-unit subsidized housing complex, owned by Charlesview, Inc., an interdenominational faith-based, non-profit organization, was constructed in 1971 but has not been adequately maintained. Yet initial offers from the University for a land swap were rebuffed by the board and the residents. Even when the board voted in 2006 to accept an offer from Harvard for 6.25 acres of land where the Brighton Mills shopping center is currently located, residents remained dissatisfied, staging protests and charging that they were being excluded from the decision-making process.

In July 2009, the latest draft of the plan was submitted to the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which oversees the city’s development projects. Over half a decade had passed since the land swap idea was first introduced.

“I’m sure it seems painfully long for the Charlesview residents, when it’s been pretty clear that what they’re looking for is a decent place to live, a way to stay in the community, and [a way to] stay as a community,” says John Cusack, a North Allston resident and Task Force member. “It’s just that in order to do the best job you can, to get it as right as possible, you got to take your time. It’s horrible but you have to.”

The additional land provided by Harvard in the latest draft allowed planners to reduce the total number of units on the site while increasing the number of actual buildings, replacing several larger, multi-unit buildings with smaller structures. Jacques says the development’s height and density, which had been one of the main concerns in the original plan, will now be comparable to those of its surrounding neighborhood.

All 213 affordable housing units from the original apartment complex will be accommodated at the new site, but 147 new mixed income units will be available for rental or home ownership.

Although the market rate units will be somewhat separated from the subsidized residences, Fainstein says that the general level of integration included in the plan is probably sufficient. “Really mixing” the different types of residences, she says, may pose a marketing challenge for the more expensive units.

AVOIDING THE FRAY

Despite the revisions, some Allston residents say that the Charlesview relocation, tantamount to a major residential transformation at the heart of the local neighborhood, remains critically flawed. But even more disconcerting is the slender time frame they have to address their qualms: The community review process is slated to end in October—only three months after the Community Builders presented their revised plan. So far, only one public discussion has been dedicated to examining the plan.

The solution, some residents argue, is for the University to allow development on more of its Allston land holdings adjacent to the proposed Charlesview site—much of which currently sits vacant or has no explicit future institutional purpose. But Harvard has largely shied away from directly commenting on or involving itself in the planning process, preferring to allow the Community Builders and the City to wrangle over details.

University spokeswoman Lauren Marshall, when asked whether Harvard is open to the possibility of providing more land for development or if it had other institutional designs for those plots, wrote in an e-mailed statement that the University has “had a productive discussion with Charlesview Inc.” and “remains respectful of the public review process that is underway.”

Not everyone believes that more land is the solution.

“It’s easy to point to Harvard and say give more land, but maybe the Community Builders should try to develop this land in a different way,” says Paul Berkeley, president of the Allston Civic Association. “There’s no one person that holds the key.”

Shumaker, the BRA spokeswoman, says that the revised plan does address a number of the previous concerns, but notes that a third and final revision cycle is a possibility if the plan is not approved. Only after the public review process concludes, she says, will City planners know if the changes are adequate.

“Right now, our job is to review the project currently before us,” Shumaker says.

—Staff writer Michelle L. Quach can be reached at mquach@fas.harvard.edu.

--Staff writer Peter F. Zhu can be reached at pzhu@fas.harvard.edu.