Gleaming buildings visible from Cambridge across the Charles River signal the transformation of an overgrown rail-truck transfer yard in Allston—now Harvard’s Enterprise Research Campus (ERC). The mixed-use development, led by real estate investment corporation Tishman Speyer on land leased from Harvard, was first envisioned in 2011 as a major installment in Harvard’s expansion into Allston. The red and silver buildings are the East and West laboratories and offices. Roche/Genentech, the global pharmaceutical company, has already leased a quarter of the approximately 400,000-square-foot space, still under construction inside. The company will begin a phased move-in during the summer.
The green tower and the smaller companion building beside it are state-of-the-art apartments, with 60 percent already leased as of January. And the tall tan building with a bluish glass facade fronting Western Avenue is the Atlas Hotel, which officially opened on January 28, replete with a ground floor restaurant and, come the warmer months, rooftop dining and bar options. The Harvard COOP will open a store in the hotel offering books and clothing. Room rates range from several hundred dollars nightly to more than $2,000 for special suites.
Next door is the Harvard-owned and -operated Rubenstein Treehouse Conference Center, a building made of engineered timber and designed by Kajima professor in practice of architecture Jeanne Gang. The conference center, which hosted several large gatherings in December 2025, can accommodate events with as few as 20 and as many as 755 attendees. Phin Coffee House, a Vietnamese coffee shop with an existing location in downtown Boston, will open later this spring on the ground floor, welcoming the public into this low-carbon building. The cement used in its construction was made with ground glass as a pozzolan to reduce its carbon content by as much as 95 percent.
One Milestone—two laboratory and office buildings, named for their street address—is still under construction on a nine-acre campus, as are the retail portions of the ERC, which will include a Little Sprouts daycare center. Still to come are the finishing touches (a sculpture, more plantings) on the two-acre greenway that unites the complex. The linear park will eventually provide pedestrian and bicycle connections east to the Charles River and west to the landscaped swales and groves (see “Green Shoots,” page 59) behind Harvard’s Science and Engineering Complex—and beyond to the residential neighborhoods of Allston.
Next to open on nearby North Harvard Street will be the Goel Center for Creativity and Performance: a new home for the American Repertory Theater, and a significant addition to Allston’s cultural landscape.
