Harvard building project stirs fear

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, whose grandparents bought a house next to the arboretum 70 years ago and 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 say they are wary of the university's designs on land around the arboretum.

Councilor John Tobin echoed those concerns Monday night.

"Harvard's a tough customer, been there a long time and good at what they do," Tobin said in an interview at the meeting at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Roslindale. "You've seen them run roughshod over some of the communities in the city, and they're not going to do that here."

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 yesterday. "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.

The arboretum glitters on the Emerald Necklace, a 7-mile string of parks laid out before the turn of the century by architect Frederick Law Olmsted. The city maintains security and utilities; Harvard oversees the collections.

Harvard hopes to submit its final plan by August to the Boston Redevelopment Authority. If approved, the plan moves on to the zoning commission.

Yesterday afternoon, O'Brien hand-delivered a letter addressed to Harvard's president-elect, Drew Gilpin Faust, raising his "serious unresolved questions" and "grave misgiving" about building near the arboretum, private land that residents consider their backyard where they walk their dogs and where teenagers gather. He signed the letter: "Very Truly Yours, Weld Hill Woodlands Task Force."

That task force is only weeks old, and O'Brien is its only member, so far.

He grew up on Mendum Street, next to the arboretum. His grandfather walked the paths until the day he died, and in 1963 his parents bought the house where he lives today. O'Brien thinks that because Harvard is a tax-exempt nonprofit, it is obligated to uphold an informal covenant with the community.

"Harvard is not a private equity firm with an English Department attached to it," said O'Brien, 49, a landscape planner. "Harvard is not Donald Trump."

Harvard has reawakened distrust in residents like O'Brien, some of whom can remember when the city sold a public park adjoining the lot in question to an organization now called Hebrew SeniorLife, in the 1950s. O'Brien said his parents circulated a petition while living in a nearby apartment and, with the backing of concerned neighbors, offered to outbid the buyers. Their efforts failed.

After the sale, the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center was built in the park's place and opened in 1963. Now, residents fear that Harvard will not stop at constructing the research facility and will expand into other parts of its privately owned land.

After Monday night's meeting, grade-school teacher Lisa Evans drove home on Weld Street, facing Harvard's lot. She walked around the corner of the stone wall separating Harvard's land from the street, arriving at a chain-link side gate.

She hiked up a gravel path to the chest-high grass. "This is what a wonderful neighbor Harvard is," said Evans, 37.

When she was considering moving from Jamaica Plain in 2003, she heard of Harvard's plans to construct the facility.

Evans got the real estate agent to knock off "a big chunk of change," she said, then moved there anyway.

April Yee can be reached at ayee@globe.com.