New Museum on Fast Track

New Museum on Fast Track - Harvard Magazine

Community members comprising the Harvard Allston Task Force formally reacted to the project proposal in a memorandum to the BRA on January 24. The building, they said, “is too large for the site” and at the same time “too small because of its very limited exhibit space and lack of space for the broad array of community and public educational programs that are essential to this project.” A neighborhood development plan written by Harvard, the City of Boston, and the Allston community established a 35-foot height limit as desirable at this location, the task force members noted, and “Harvard’s proposal for a 60-foot-high building is in clear conflict” with that understanding. They wrote of concerns about parking, exterior lighting, the loss of privacy of residents on nearby streets, and the impact of shadows cast by the building on their homes, and called for “three-dimensional views looking at the proposed building from the ground level, first floor, and second floor of homes on these streets….” They asked for detailed floor plans and interior three-dimensional renderings for the museum shop and the café, spaces that seem to them very small and “far less than the amount of retail space appropriate for this key location.”