Thursday, 4:30 PM
Neighbors continue to oppose Harvard project
By April Yee, Globe Correspondent
ROSLINDALE -- Harvard’s plan to build a 45,000-square-foot research facility next to the Arnold Arboretum has nearby residents dreading the disappearance of open space, and a handful hope they can stonewall, if not stop, the powerful university.
"It’s sort of us against Harvard," said Frank O’Brien, who lives in a house on the same street. "Just because Harvard can do something, doesn’t mean it should do something."
Harvard wants to build a two-story brick-and-glass building to house the arboretum’s administration and research at the base of a hill near the corner of Centre and Weld streets, on a 14.2-acre lot the university bought in 1922. In the four years since Harvard announced its plans, residents have joined a city-appointed task force and thronged public meetings. The latest was Monday night, when more than 50 residents voiced their distress to a Harvard representative and to staff from the mayor’s office.
While the plan is a small slice of Harvard’s expansion into residential areas, residents who have closely watched the university’s ongoing push into Allston, where it plans to shift part of its campus, say they are wary of the university’s designs on land around the arboretum.
Harvard’s director of community relations told residents nothing else would be built on the lot through 2882, the final year of Harvard’s lease on the arboretum’s 265 acres, which it negotiated with Boston in 1882.
"We have just, as a private property owner, placed a restriction on the use of our property for 875 years," Harvard’s director of community relations, Kevin McCluskey, said in an interview Tuesday. “Anyone who’s unimpressed by that really needs to look more carefully at the situation."
But some residents doubt that Harvard will keep the promise, focusing on a clause in the university’s master plan that would allow the Legislature’s two houses to modify the restriction by a two-thirds vote. Some neighbors believe that Harvard can finagle just such a political miracle, however unlikely.
April Yee can be reached at ayee@globe.com.
