Good Zoning Makes Good Neighbors

Beyond the Biological Laboratories, past the Harvard Cyclotron and facilities maintenance buildings, lies the University's largest developable parcel of land in Cambridge, the Oxford Street parking lot. At this northern edge of Harvard's campus, along Hammond Street, an area zoned for 120-foot buildings on the Harvard side meets a residential neighborhood where the maximum allowed height is 35 feet. The site is prime real estate that might someday be of interest to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences or to the Law School. Looming as a possibility is the potential for conflict between Harvard's future plans for growth and the neighborhood's desire to protect its residential character--the sort of conflict that is ongoing over the proposed Knafel Center to the south.

When the City of Cambridge identified the University's Hammond Street edge as an area of transition that needed attention, Harvard planners decided to meet with neighbors to come up with new zoning language together, rather than wait for a city planner to propose it for them. The result, produced in collaboration with architect and urban designer Dennis Carlone, M.A.U. '76, is a comprehensive set of urban design and campus planning parameters--including a 75-foot reduction in maximum buildable height on Hammond Street; requirements for setbacks, frontage, and distances between buildings; as well as guidelines governing visual and pedestrian access, limits on vehicular and service access, even specification of building materials. The document, which goes well beyond typical zoning agreements, provides extensive protections for the neighborhood while also protecting Harvard's right to develop the land on its side of the transition zone. The City of Cambridge must approve the proposals before they become part of an overlay district (the zoning principles governing use of the land).

The renderings shown above, prepared by Carlone Associates Architecture, Urban Design are not plans, but they illustrate the kinds of buildings allowed by the regulatory requirements proposed by Harvard and its Hammond Street neighbors. "The renderings help convey character and scale," says Harvard's senior director of community relations, Mary Power, "and demonstrate our commitment to treating the edge in a way that is compatible with the existing residential scale along Hammond and Museum Streets."

This provides "predictability for both sides," says director of physical planning Harris Band. The language "allows buildings that are big enough for the University to utilize effectively and efficiently for institutional purposes, and yet it keeps the scale of the edge comparable to the domestic scale across the street." Though Harvard plans to move an historic wood-frame structure, Palfrey House, to the edge, no other specific structures are yet planned for the site. "The program will evolve over time," Band says. Harvard's senior director of community relations, Mary Power, says, "Rather than waiting for a development proposal to trigger a dialogue that might lead to a community reaction, we have--through this citywide growth management process--welcomed the opportunity to have a discussion with our neighbors that will result in zoning change even before there are any specific development plans." "The most successful negotiation about development that I've ever been involved in," says Band.

Harvard had neglected the area for many years. A high chain-link fence with barbed wire on top (a relic of World War II-era needs to protect the cyclotron) has long defined the edge. But the University has committed itself to short-term landscaping improvements and residents are happy with the proposed zoning changes. Fred Meyer, a member of the Agassiz neighborhood council who has been a Realtor in Harvard Square for 36 years, says he's "pleased with Harvard's responsiveness," while noting that "as in any negotiation with Harvard, it took a lot longer than you might expect if you weren't familiar with Harvard's decentralized decision-making structure."

South of the transition zone, Harvard has defined some long-term goals for the area that reflect a commitment to arranging buildings around open space and trying to bring the landscape of the North Yard out toward the residential neighborhood. The most dramatic of these ideas is to extend Divinity Avenue beyond the Farlow University Herbaria to create a visual and pedestrian corridor linking the Oxford Street site to the rest of the campus. A second axis running perpendicular to this is imagined running between Conant and Divinity Halls. Associate vice president for planning and real estate Kathy Spiegelman emphasizes that "there is no plan underway" to implement these ideas, which would require moving buildings. "But," she says, "the University changes so much over time that to know where you want to get to as opportunities present themselves is very important, even if they are a long time away."

What is clear, says Spiegelman, is that the University must have some flexibility on the developable land it currently owns in Cambridge. Most of that is parking lots--as on Oxford Street--and when land is scarce and urban design amenities are important to the faculty and students as well as the neighbors, the University has to seriously examine putting the parking underground, she says.

As for what will be built above any subsurface parking on the Oxford Street site, one may safely speculate that the huge science initiative announced by dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy Knowles this spring will drive at least some of it (see "Big Thinking about Science," March-April, page 65).

Two new science buildings are already planned for sites just to the south. A new life-sciences facility will replace Gibbs Laboratory in the block between Divinity Avenue and Oxford Street, linking the close-to-completed Naito Chemistry and Fairchild Biochemistry Buildings. The structure will house the new Center for Genomics Research directed by Dari Shalon with faculty codirectors Stuart L. Schreiber, Loeb professor of chemistry, and Douglas Melton, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. It will also house additional laboratory space, and permit creation of a consolidated loading area for the three buildings.

The academic programming for a new physical-sciences building on Oxford Street is also underway. Planners, who hope to link the Cruft and McKay Laboratories, expect to solicit proposals from architects beginning in January. The building is to house a new center for imaging and mesoscale structures, which will require low-vibration laboratory space for chemical synthesis as well as expensive tools (electron microscopy and nanofabrication facilities, for example) that would be shared by multiple research groups--a model of use similar to that employed for many years at the cyclotron. The building is expected to house "high quality laboratory space to help attract outstanding investigators to Harvard," as well as "a range of important central facilities for use by faculty, students, and postdocs," according to a proposal drafted by a group of science professors.

The two new science facilities essentially fill in areas of the core campus. However, "the science initiative that Dean Knowles announced last year will require space beyond those two physical structures," says Spiegelman. Five new centers with a price tag of between $150 million and $200 million were announced by Knowles, possibly resulting in at least a few more buildings. Given that, she says, "One could expect in the next five years that FAS will probably be thinking about how they want to build on the Oxford Street parking lot."

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