Allston Brighton Community Blog

Charles River Speedway Tour and Charrette - Saturday, April 30th

It is nice that DCR has re-shingled and painted the Speedway building on Western Ave, but it is still an empty building on a blighted site. Hopefully this event next Saturday will help lead to something more.

Charles River Speedway Headquarters, 1420 Soldiers Field Road, Brighton 9am

Join the Boston Preservation Alliance and the Brighton-Allston Historical Society to envision a new future for the Charles River Speedway Headquarters in Brighton. Your participation will assist us and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation in exploring opportunities for this unique, historic complex. The charrette will inform decision-making by public agencies and other interested parties regarding the future of the Charles River Speedway Headquarters. The charrette will also include an update about the Boston Landmarks Commission's Boston Landmark Study Report for the complex and an overview of Historic Boston Incorporated's planned feasibility study.

9:00-10:00 am
Tour of the Complex
Charles River Speedway Headquarters
1420 Soldiers Field Road, Brighton

10:30 am-2:45 pm
Presentations and Charrette
Honan-Allston Branch Library
300 North Harvard Street, Allston

Light morning refreshments and lunch is included. Transportation from the Speedway Complex to the library will be provided as needed.

Advance registration is required. Please RSVP for this event by Tuesday, April 26 to 617-367-2458 or admin@bostonpreservation.org

Harvard names new Provost - What will he want to do in Allston?

My sense is that every time a new person comes to Harvard in one of these high-level positions (Provost, Vice President for Capital Planning) it resets the clock on Harvard's planning for Allston. These new people are unlikely to accept 100% of the decisions that their predecessors made, and it seems equally likely that they will re-do some of the planning processes so that they can learn the issues and make their own decisions.

So my expectations for Harvard's Allston Work Team report (due sometime this summer) are lowered by the fact that a new Provost who was not involved in any of their deliberations will soon arrive and use that report as just one input into his own decision-making.

Harvard names new provost Boston Business Journal

"Garber will succeed Steven E. Hyman, who announced late last year that he would step down at the end of this academic year. Garber’s appointment is effective Sept. 1.

Among the areas Garber will focus on include “leading the University’s efforts to define academic aspirations and achievable programs in the entrepreneurial space represented by Allston"

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/4/15/garber-harvard-university-hyman-provost-faust

Garber said he will prioritize the integration of Harvard’s schools and the University’s future development in Allston.

“One of the biggest attractions of this job is the ability to participate in the future of the Allston campus,” Garber said. “I view Allston as an opportunity unlike any other in American higher education today, where there is a campus that can be used to help realize the University’s vision for the future and make this a truly twenty-first century university.”

Stone Hearth renovation starts

It has been more than 3 years since Harvard bought the property and 6 months since we first heard about Stone Hearth Pizza coming to Allston. Yesterday showed the first physical signs of the renovation of what was once the Barry's Corner CITGO station.

At this rate, Barry's Corner will be great by 2050. Good things come to those that wait!

April, 2011

2007

Town/Gown glimpse from across the river

Court denies suit against city and Lesley over Art Institue plan A state Land Court judge has ruled against residents suing the City of Cambridge and Lesley University over plans to relocate the Art Institute of Boston to the site of a historic church in Porter Square. Neighbors of the North Prospect Church had filed the suit in 2009 asking the court to overturn new zoning laws that enable Lesley to move the church to the south side of its Massachusetts Avenue property to make way for a new four-story building for the institute.

Ex-Harvard/Allston planners to plan with MIT/Cambridge

David Dixon and Goody Clancy - the consultants for the North Allston Strategic Framework- will be doing similar work with a city, neighborhood, and university in Cambridge. Hopefully more of their planning will become reality this time.

Meanwhile, I heard good things about new BRA Director Peter Meade from a friend who knows him well, but has Meade said anything about Harvard's abandoned Allston expansion in his recent interviews? When John Palmieri got the job in 2007, Harvard & Allston were supposed to be one of his top priorities.

http://www.wbur.org/2011/04/06/boston-redevelopment

Meade said he’s looking forward to doing work in Roxbury, Dudley Square and the Innovation District in South Boston, as well as the barren Filene’s site at Downtown Crossing.

City picks Kendall study firm - The Tech

Cambridge City Council yesterday selected Goody Clancy & Associates, a Boston architecture and planning firm, as consultants for the forthcoming study on the future of urban development in the area between Kendall and Central Squares. The study will define processes and implement changes that account for “missed opportunities” between the squares and bring together the wide array of existing plans and zoning change proposals that are in progress in the area.

The Council voted 8-0 last night to approve the selection of Goody Clancy and to allocate $350,000 for the study from two sources: a $175,000 one-time increase in MIT’s Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT), and a $175,000 “payment for ‘Neighborhood Planning Studies’ as project mitigation from Boston Properties.
David Dixon, head of Goody Clancy’s planning and urban design division, discussed Goody’s approach to the project. Dixon stressed the importance of housing in vitalizing the area. “It won’t do us any good to say ‘we need more retail in Central Square’ unless we expand the market. The best way to expand the market is housing,” he said.

As MIT rises, so does its city

Front page story in the Globe today about how MIT continues to make investments in building a better campus and community. http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2011/04/04/mit_continues_to_revive_cambridge

Over the last decade, MIT’s academic footprint has increased by more than 2.7 million square feet, its largest building boom since the federally funded postwar expansion of the 1960s. Now, as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology celebrates its sesquicentennial this month, it is beginning to turn its attention toward renovating facilities and developing neighboring commercial holdings.

The recent growth, which MIT pursued even through the recession, has injected millions of dollars into the city, augmented the university’s involvement in the life sciences, and remade once-gritty neighborhoods into one of the prime biotechnology and research centers in the country.

And in contrast to Harvard’s stalled expansion across the river into Boston’s Allston neighborhood during the recent economic downturn, MIT has managed to complete its building projects through heavy fund-raising and increased borrowing.

Thanks Globe for publishing my Letter to the Editor

Harvard’s ‘step forward’ in Allston seems more like a tiptoe

Firm Commitments?

Did anyone find "firm commitments" in Drew Faust's recent Allston letter? Apparently someone at the Globe did.

Huge all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant coming to Western Ave

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/3/24/maki-restaurant-residents-allston/

"Maki Maki will offer seating for 180 people and will be open seven days a week for lunch and dinner"

Formerly Allston-bound School Deepens Ties Elsewhere

From the Harvard School of Public Health 2003 Annual Report

The planned relocation of the Harvard School of Public Health to a new campus in Allston a decade from now presents us with incredible opportunities--and an urgent necessity--for thinking about the future of public health.

From yesterday's Boston.com - As Harvard expands in Mission Hill, new questions on Allston plans

Harvard University employees are moving into a newly restored Mission Hill building – one of three century-old former church complex facilities previously slated for demolition.

The university has a 10-year lease at the site that will house nearly 200 administrative workers for the Harvard School of Public Health.

Former New Balance CEO now owns site of proposed Lowe's

The New Balance plans for "a sports complex, hotel, park, movie theater, office buildings, and community space, along with a commuter rail station and access to the turnpike" always sounded better to me than a low-density, low-job creating Lowe's that would have duplicated the products available at the Watertown Home Depot and many smaller nearby retailers.

The New Balance idea of creating new on- and off-ramps to the Mass Pike though seemed strange to me, and of course the devil is in the details. For example, the New Balance and WGBH buildings could have done much more to animate the Market St / North Beacon St area and for some reason they haven't spurred much new development to enrich the area around them.

But it will be great to see eventually see that Guest Street land transformed and hopefully it starts a trend that Harvard and other property owners in the area might follow.

Group led by New Balance chair buys, intends to develop 15-acre Brighton plot - Boston.com

Faust, Berkeley, Whelan, and Mattison on Harvard/Allston

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/allston_brighton/2011/03/allston_residents_say_harvards.html

"However, some residents – albeit thankful for the school’s positive steps forward – say until Harvard resumes work on its bigger promises for developing that area – most notably a $1.4-billion science center complex stalled since late 2009 – the university will not have the complete trust and backing of the Allston community.

“There’s a great deal of anxiety in the community on this [science center] site, and until that gets resolved that anxiety won’t go away,” said Paul Berkeley, a member of the Harvard Allston Task Force, a city-appointed group created to provide civic feedback to the school as its Allston campus expands."

Another Allston editorial from the Crimson

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/3/11/allston-harvard-community-university

"Harvard needs nothing short of a defining vision for this project and must retool its approach to developing Allston to actualize the vibrant community it initially vowed to create...

Additionally, Harvard should be consulting the residents themselves even more than they do already. We are no experts on the specific needs of the Allston community, but there are those who are—and, to a certain extent, they have been struggling to make their voices heard.... President Faust has reassured the community that Allston remains a priority. But words mean only so much, and at some point they need to be translated into measureable plans."

City approves Harvard Innovation Lab project in Allston

Don't know if Harvard or the BRA considered any of the community input about the project or the City's Environment Departments concerns about Harvard's transportation and parking plans.

City approves $20M Harvard Innovation Lab project in Allston - Boston.com

http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthoritynews.org/2011/03/11/bra-approves-harvard-university/

Harvard’s vaunted new $1 billion Allston science center was supposed to be the centerpiece of the university’s new, modern face. It was to be the anchor of a gleaming, interdisciplinary, forward-looking empire. But construction ground to a halt in December 2009, and there’s no telling when work might resume. The science center site was supposed to be the opening round in the revitalization of a corner of town that never recovered from BRA bulldozers. Instead, the fenced-in site radiates decay.

Cutting-edge research brings in money, but Harvard isn’t chasing a profit in Allston. All it’s trying to do is strengthen its institutional standing as much as possible, and maybe not be an awful neighbor along the way.

Crimson interviews Allston kids at Harvard

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/3/9/allston-holm-harvard-neighborhood/

Allston residents question Harvard's priorities

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/3/8/allston-university-harvard-harvards/

Residents fear that with the University focusing on the renovation of undergraduate housing, Harvard’s holdings in Allston will not be developed any time in the near future.

“Allston’s always the first priority after other things,” local resident and Harvard-Allston Task Force member Bruce E. Houghton said.

Crimson Envisions Allston Capital Campaign

Nice to see that the editors of the Crimson think Havard should put more emphasis on raising money to re-start Harvard's Allston expansion.

Capitalizing on Community - Opinion - The Harvard Crimson

"Recent revelations that Harvard has quietly begun fundraising for a capital campaign have prompted speculation on the extent and direction such a program would take...

recently administrators and donors have said that the primary focus is raising money for the upcoming House Renewal project...

although the capital campaign should include internal improvements, it must prioritize above all else resuming development on the Allston campus and restoring the local community...

There is no reason that the capital campaign cannot have both internal and external ends, but the Allston community must take precedence."