Harvard's Institutional Plann

Allston community planning workshop draws 50
By Keith Howard, Correspondent
Thu Apr 10, 2008, 11:23 AM EDT
Allston-Brighton -

Allston-Brighton - As the Harvard machine keeps growing, Allston-Brighton residents are gearing up for another tug-of-war to keep foot traffic on their streets and university students off their front doorsteps.

The Boston Redevelopment Association had the first of two workshops to hear feedback about Harvard’s Institutional Master Plan and the North Allston-Brighton Community-Wide Plan, which will build upon the guidelines set up by the 2005 North Allston Strategic Framework for Planning.

During the April 9 meeting at the Honan-Allston Library, the BRA gave a PowerPoint presentation outlining possible methods of expansion before an audience of more than 50 people. Afterwards, residents split into four different groups to brainstorm ideas on economic development, land use and new development, transportation and urban design.

“It was a meant to be a meeting to start a process that will help us as an entire neighborhood,” said Michael F. Glavin, deputy director for institutional development. “It’s pretty critical that we hear from the community about its priorities and needs.”

According to Glavin, the benefits set up by the recently signed cooperation agreement associated with Harvard’s science center are a good example of the critical advice the BRA is looking for within the community. “A lot of their input on the types of benefits that they thought were important are in this,” he said.

The Harvard Allston Task Force developed a cooperation agreement for a benefits package through a compromise with the city of Boston and Harvard University, which will be building a $1 billion science complex in north Allston.

Some of the benefits include $23.9 million to be distributed over 10 years; a partnership fund to distribute $500,000 in grants over five years to neighborhood programs; and another $500,000 for needs that will be assed in the future.

While Kairos Shen, the BRA’s director of planning, agreed that the issues raised in the cooperation agreement were important, he insisted that the North Allston Community-Wide Plan is an entirely new opportunity to do something truly unique.

“These [cooperation agreement] are very specific contributions that will be committed to when they sign,” he said. “In a sense the scope of that is much more narrow than [what] we are invested in today. We’re providing the larger context to provide for the future planning for this area.”

Neighborhood residents said this process should make a point to provide the type of services the community really needs, instead of setting up another chain of bookstores or coffee shops.