Harvard University will seek to revive its recession-stalled expansion into Boston’s Allston neighborhood by working with private developers and investors, university officials said Wednesday. Harvard, which owns 359 acres in Allston, was forced to stop work on a partially-constructed $1-billion science complex there in 2009 because of the beating its endowment was taking from the recession.
Harvard said in a news release that a 14-member committee had analyzed the university’s expansion over 18 months. The committee, which included eight university deans, told President Drew Faust that Harvard should move ahead with a new version of the big science facility, as well as with a research campus for private companies, a conference center and hotel, housing and retail offerings, and more.
Alex Krieger, a professor in practice of urban design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, was one of the committee’s co-chairs. He said universities have “gravitational pull” that can attract developers in a variety of partnership scenarios. “The real estate in Allston Landing North is unmatched in the region,” he said, “and the opportunity for development that supports broader health care and life sciences communities in Boston is tremendous.”
But Harvard’s Allston plans have long been a source of angst and disappointment in the neighborhood itself. A member of a neighborhood planning group, Harry Mattison, told The Boston Globe that the university had “made and broken so many promises and had so many great ideas that then later get thrown into the trash that my neighbors and I have really lost any faith we ever had in Harvard.’’
