Dread is rising in Harvard's hole

As work slows, acres of blight worry Allston

Because of the decision to slow the costly work, it could be years before Harvard completes the science building under construction in Allston, a major piece of the university's 350-acre expansion plan. (George Rizer/ Globe Staff)

Allston residents still cling to the watercolor images Harvard has dangled before them over the years. Bike paths leading to the Charles River. A canopy of trees shading wide sidewalks lined with cafes, boutiques, and theaters. Neighbors congregating by public art installations, gardens, and spraying fountains.

Harvard, with its deep pockets, residents believed, would help transform their industrial neighborhood into something akin to bustling, iconic Harvard Square in Cambridge.

But last week's announcement that the wealthy university would dramatically slow - and possibly halt - its expansion across the river as it copes with the recession has cast a long shadow over Allston's future and left many residents forlorn, their dreams of brighter years ahead dashed.

"Harvard just holds out these images like a mirage in the desert," said Harry Mattison, an Allston resident and member of a neighborhood planning task force. "There's this continual visual that this wonderful renaissance for the neighborhood is just around the corner, but it could be decades of looking at all the blight."

More than 10 years after Harvard announced sweeping plans to expand its campus into Allston, the neighborhood remains a hodgepodge of empty lots, storefronts, and buildings used for back-office operations - all owned by Harvard. The university bought up swaths of prop erty now totaling more than 350 acres. As it prepared for future development and tenants began to leave, Harvard sucked the vitality out of pockets of Allston, residents say.

During a tour of university-owned property last fall, Kevin McCluskey, a Harvard liaison to the Allston community, waved toward a squat brick building that now houses the central pastry kitchen for Finale, a local dessert chain started by Harvard Business School graduates.

"This is one of the great business entrepreneurial success stories," McCluskey exclaimed. "Here they are!"

Residents lament that Finale's Allston operation has no bakery shop or restaurant. That may come in the future, McCluskey said, but right now, "there's no foot traffic."

Exactly.

The Volkswagen dealership around the corner on Western Avenue recently moved to Watertown because Harvard said it needed the space. Also gone: a dry cleaner, a used-car dealership, a pet store/animal hospital, and a Kmart and Office Max that once did brisk business in a Harvard-owned strip mall now devoid of most of its tenants.

"This is what we have now, another empty, rotting building," Mattison said. "Harvard has a stranglehold on commercial real estate."

A short walk away, a 5-acre crater gapes at the site of an old Pepsi warehouse, where Harvard's highly acclaimed science complex was to open in 2011. It was touted as the first piece of a 50-year plan for Allston that symbolized the launch of one of the largest construction projects Boston would see for decades. The building would bring in 1,000 construction jobs, university officials promised, half of which would go to Boston residents.

The structure was intended to house scientists who would find cures for deadly diseases, host the world's largest stem cell facility, and advance Boston's biotechnology and life sciences industry. Now, it could be many more years before the building is finished.

Longtime residents say this is a first: the prospect that construction already underway might be halted. With that grim possibility in mind, residents are bracing for potentially years of disruption and their neighborhood looking like an eyesore.

Residents, also complaining about an increase in rats they say is a result of the science complex construction, will meet with Harvard officials tonight at the local library about the future of their neighborhood.

Unlike most neighborhoods immersed in town-gown battles, many Allston residents want Harvard to develop there. They say they don't have much choice if they want life injected back into their community, which some say has become a wasteland.

For now, though, it seems to them that the university is not developing, but land banking.

Last month, Harvard announced that it had purchased a building that houses a machine shop, without plans for its use. McCluskey said Harvard rents out approximately 85 percent of its leasable properties and is actively marketing them, even in this tough economic climate.

To be fair, Mattison said, he understands Harvard's new financial limitations. The university has tried to make good on its promises to Allston, sprucing up the neighborhood with new trees, sidewalks, and grassy fields where asphalt truck lots once sprawled. But he would like to work with Harvard to make further improvements if construction comes to a standstill.

On Friday morning, dozens of pedestrians hurried through a busy intersection known as Barry's Corner. It's where town meets gown, a short walk down North Harvard Street from the university's historic football stadium and down Western Avenue from the Harvard Business School.

John Eskew, an Allston resident, passes a series of vacant buildings and lots each morning on the way to his software engineering job in Central Square. Friday, he walked past an empty Citgo gas station, the shell of the former Volkswagen dealership, and orange cranes towering above the yawning hole that is the intended site of the science complex - far from the picturesque public square depicted in Harvard's plans.

"It would be nice to see the empty properties filled with something that brings life to the neighborhood," said Eskew, who worries that a slowdown in completing the science complex will mean further delays in finding tenants for Harvard's buildings.

In the meantime, residents, fearing abandonment, savor the small signs of Harvard's commitment to Allston: improvements to local playgrounds, the handicap ramp at St. Anthony's church, the weekly farmer's market - all subsidized by the university.

They've taken note of the personal appearances made by Harvard's president, Drew Faust - at a summer barbecue in a soon-to-be-developed park behind the public library built on Harvard-provided land, and at a ribbon-cutting for a neighborhood complex where Harvard students tutor local children.

Perhaps this is all residents can hope for in the near future.

"A lot of people think Harvard could be the goose that lays the golden egg, and now they see Harvard as reneging," said Ray Mellone, chairman of the Harvard Allston Task Force who has lived in the neighborhood for 73 years. "But Harvard can't wave a magic wand over everything and make it all happy for everyone."

Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com.