Thirsty Scholars Pour Into North Allston; Systems Biology Finals Club To Follow

Harvard University hasn't been working with, or even up front with, residents of North Allston and North Brighton according to an article in The Harvard Crimson last week. (The article's additional claim that Boston College behaves neighborly by comparison is the subject of much dispute.) Harvard's Director of Community Relations, Kevin McCluskey, was quoted in the original Crimson story but was unsatisfied with Harvard's depiction in it -- so he and Kathy Spiegelmann wrote a follow-up letter-to-the-editor, published in Monday's edition, titled, "Harvard Hopes to Maintain Open Dialogue with Allston."

Members of Harvard's Faculty must have been quite confused that same Monday to hear Chris Gordon, Chief Operating Officer of Harvard's Allston Development Group, tell them during the faculty meeting that they had hidden a room on the roof of the Allston Science Complex -- named a "function room" on all the drawings and documents -- that is actually intended to be a bar for the scientists to socialize and drink.

There is no indication that Gordon or any other members of the ADG ever mentioned this intended use for a room in the Science Complex during the zoning approval process under Article 80 of Boston's zoning code. It's not a stretch to say that somebody's done found lion at the site.

It is outrageous that McCluskey publishes a letter-to-the-editor claiming to work with the neighborhood on the same day that Gordon tells the faculty how Harvard hasn't been up-front with the neighborhood.


A bar for 80-hour-a-week, nose-to-the-bench molecular biologists and biochemists? Well, some might say that they they know what they're doing. A friend once told me that, if she ever decided to drop acid, she would trust Caltech or MIT chemists to synthesize it, because she was sure that they would run a nuclear magnetic resonance test to verify its purity. But would she trust a Harvard chemist? Maybe, maybe not.


University chemists and biologists are popular at after-hours events, since it's relatively easy to sneak 96% ethanol out of the stockroom or the lab shelves. Most scientists know to avoid using ethanol more pure than 96%, however, because carcinogenic benzyne is added to it as a material separation agent... so the Allston Science Complex Systems Biology Finals Club bartender ought to be careful when purchasing product for their shelves.

Would proteasome researchers think highly of a Science Complex bar, or would they consider it degrading?


Via Harry Mattison.

Image of Somerville's Thirsty Scholar Pub by davidz, LSD image by Quasimondo, and ethanol by willie lee (not jack brown), provided through a Creative Commons license.

Civics Lesson on Zoning

The Boston College student newspaper, The Heights, published an op-ed by freshman Kelly McCartney under the title, "University Has a Right to Expand":

What does come at a cost is BC's 10-year plan, a $1.6 billion effort to better the University. In addition to increasing the range of academics and activities available to undergraduates and the community, BC is also spending precious funds to increase the number of students on campus per the city of Boston's new recommendation.

Unfortunately, putting more students on campus is not enough for the neighborhood of Allston-Brighton. They also want to decide when, where, and how we do so. A popular opinion of the surrounding neighborhoods demands that BC add additional stories to residence halls on the Chestnut Hill campus to dissolve the need for housing on the Brighton Campus [former St. John's Seminary land].

Does an institution of higher education in Boston have the "right to expand" as they see fit?

In response to this question, (Professor) Harry Mattison, a quick-draw on the Allston Brighton Community Blog, delivered a civics lesson on the concept of zoning:

Actually, BC has no such right.

I have no right to buy some coin-operated washing machines and run a laundromat out of my basement. I have no right to buy my neighbors homes, combine the lots, demolish the existing homes, and build a 10 story apartment building. And regardless of whether or not it is a good idea, Boston College has no "right" to build dormitories, athletic stadiums, or anything else that does not pass the City's review.

Like it or not, we are all governed by Boston's Zoning Code and Boston and every other town and city in America does have the right to limit and restrict development and use of property.

What McCartney fails to recognize is that Boston has, for the past 15 years, has been about the most institutional-friendly Zoning Code that could be invented.

What do I mean? Article 80 of the Zoning Code dates back to 1992, and contains the guiding statutory language governing institutional master plans and other large and small project reviews. Article 80, in a nutshell, establishes a process by which any institution can re-zone their land to build absolutely anything. Yes, literally anything can be built on such land, regardless of the existing zoning.

If BC were to propose a 100-story building at the former St. John's Seminary land, for example, then Article 80 review is basically all they would need to get approval to break ground. Before Article 80, the underlying zoning for the land ("Conservation Protection Subdistrict") under Article 51 of the Zoning Code would have applied, which forbids skyscrapers.

The example is extreme, but the parallel is real. BC is currently proposing dormitories for the same seminary land, which are "forbidden uses" under Article 51 of the underlying Zoning Code -- just like a skyscraper is a forbidden use. That BC proposed dormitories at all for that land is an indication of how permissive Boston's Zoning Code is, in practice, towards institutions.

It might be appropriate for McCartney instead to thank the city of Boston profusely for having a Zoning Code so lax that BC could even consider proposing building those two dormitories.

BC Task Force Meeting Today at 6:30 pm: Open Space and Academic/Administrative Buildings

BC Task Force Meeting
Tuesday, January 22, 2008, 6:30-8:30 pm
Brighton Marine Health Center, 77 Warren Street, 3rd floor, Brighton MA 02135

For more information, contact: John Fitzgerald, Project Manager, BRA, 617-918-4267

Public comments on the IMPNF: Due February 5, 2008 to the BRA

Note: The BC Task Force has requested that attendees, if possible, provide them with written comments at their meetings. It doesn't have to be a formally-written letter, etc., but anything to help them assemble information in addition to verbal comments at the meetings. Address letters to Jean Woods, Chair, BC Task Force.

Agenda: The following elements of BC's 10-year institutional master plan

• Open Space
  
• Academic Buildings and Usage
• Administrative Buildings and Usage
• Summary

BC's master plan website with electronic version of their project notification form. Current summary of their campus is in Chapter 2; proposed new projects in the 10-year IMP are in Chapter 3; sustainability issues are in Chapter 8.

Open Space. In 2004-7, Boston College acquired approximately 65 acres of land (the former St. John's Seminary land, now referred to by BC as their "Brighton Campus") from the Archdiocese of Boston. This land has been previously inventoried by the Boston Parks and Recreation Department as part of the privately-owned open space in Allston-Brighton (see, for example, the previous master plan by the department). The Brighton Campus comprises more than 10% of all the open space in Allston-Brighton.

The Brighton Campus has an underlying zoning of Conservation Protection Subdistrict under Article 51 of the city's zoning code. (Article 51 defines the zoning for Allston-Brighton.) BC's Institutional Master Plan Amendment of 2006 put an institutional master plan overlay onto portions of the Brighton Campus. Their IMPA of October 2007, which is still undergoing Article 80 review by the Boston Redevelopment Authority, might seek to extend the IMP overlay to the entire site; alternatively, the IMPNF of December 2007 might do the same. (Article 80 defines the review and re-zoning process for large developments and institutional master plans.)

While the Article 80 IMP review allows re-zoning of the site, the underlying zoning is not ignored in the process. As Gerald Autler, Senior Project Manager of the BRA, wrote in April 2007:

"We certainly take aspects of the underlying zoning into account during the IMP process -- for example, the goals of the Conservation Protection Subdistrict would not be forgotten, even if the zoning provisions of the CPS do not literally apply."

According to Article 51, development in a CPS-zoned property should cluster buildings at the interior of the site an avoid impacting natural features of the property. As in any zoning, there are a series of permitted, conditionally-allowed, and forbidden uses for a CPS-zoned property under Article 51.

• Allowed uses under Article 51 include: museum; open space; "group residence, limited", single- and multi-family houses, or townhouses; "accessory parking" (connected to another lawful use); "accessory cafeteria"; and "accessory dormitory".
  
• Conditionally-allowed uses include: art gallery; auditorium, concert hall, or theater; conference center or bed-and-breakast; office space (except for retail); grounds for sports; open space recreational building; "outdoor place of recreation for profit"; research laboratory; and lodging house.
• Forbidden uses include: stadium; "dormitory not accessory to a use"; hotel, motel, or "executive suites"; restaurants and other retail uses; outdoor storage of junk, scrap, fuel, minerals, etc.; trade shops (carpenter, electrician, machine, etc.); and parking garage or lot (unless an ancillary use connected to another lawful use).

Conservation Restriction. A conservation restriction is a legally-binding document, operating outside of the zoning process, that can preserve open space in perpetuity. A public agency is typically charged with monitoring compliance, and the restriction can only be overturned by a 2/3 vote of the State Legislature.

A number of private developers have seen these conservation restrictions as good for both themselves and the surrounding community. The EF International School, for example, has worked with the Brighton community to development a pair of conservation restrictions on their Lake Street property to preserve open space in exchange for an expansion of their facilities. Harvard University has also entered into an 875-year conservation restriction on a parcel connected to the Arnold Arboretum, in exchange for a proposed development project.

Boston College has not included a conservation restriction in their IMPNF or presentations to the community.

A number of Brighton residents have proposed particular sites for conservation restrictions that could be part of the Article 80 community benefits related to BC's IMP:

• Wooded hillside along Lake Street;
  
• Athletic fields on the Brighton Campus; and
• Orchard near the southeast corner of the Brighton Campus (i.e., bordering Greycliff Road).

The Boston Globe's editorial board has already weighed in on this issue:

BC’s president, the Rev. William Leahy, points to a buffer zone of trees between the two proposed dorms and homes on Lake Street. But he is unwilling to pledge that the buffer zone will remain a permanent fixture. Such a stiff-necked approach is likely to invite the same inflexible attitude on the part of neighbors.

Preserving Natural Features. Many aspects of the Brighton Campus proposed development follow these CPS guidelines in clustering the buildings in interior locations and avoiding (or preserving) natural features of the land: the athletic facilities use existing flat field space; the parking garage avoids the steep, hillside meadow nearby; all the development avoids the wooded hillside along Lake Street; and the Foster Street development does not modify the Foster Rock or the ledge near Portina Road houses.

Other aspects of the development do not appear to preserve features (or at least require clarification): the undergraduate dormitory site on or near a rock outcropping along Commonwealth Avenue; and the removal of a substantial length of the stone wall on both sides of Commonwealth Avenue.

Academic and Administrative Buildings and Uses. Three new buildings (possibly connected together as only one or two buildings) are proposed along the Brighton Campus's southern edge on Commonwealth Avenue as part of this 10-year IMP:

• Department of Fine Arts, 4-5 stories, 60-70 feet tall, 30,000 square feet;
  
• Art Museum, 3-story, probably also 60-70 feet tall (e.g., compare with Harvard's proposed HUAM at Barry's Corner, which is also very tall even though only three stories), 21,000 square feet; and
• Auditorium, 1200 seats, 25,000 square feet.

Uses for the auditorium are unclear in the IMPNF; possibilities could include academic conferences and seminars, musical concerts, rock concerts, theater plays, etc. On-site parking related to some of these uses might be an issue to be raised.

Renovations are also planned for number of buildings on the Brighton Campus purchased from the Archdiocese. The Chancery, Creagh Library, and part of St. John's Hall (?) are listed as being converted to administrative use, while Bishop Peterson Hall would be converted to administrative and academic use. Note that Bishop Peterson Hall's renovation and subsequent use is currently in question: the IMPNF states that the IMPA's proposed use is infeasible for office and academic uses of the School of Theology and Ministry, such that St. William's Hall will be used for the STM instead.

Those many administrative office buildings in the Brighton Campus may house a potentially large number of employees who would presumably move from their current offices elsewhere at BC. No indication is given in the IMPNF as to which offices would be moving, or what the employees' previous offices would be used for after they are vacated.

The 10-year IMP for BC's campus in Newton contains many academic projects. On the main Chestnut Hill Campus, five projects are proposed:

• Academic building for the Humanities;
• Academic building for Graduate School of Social Work and Connell School of Nursing;
• Stokes Commons, a student center and dining facility;
  
• New Science Center (first phase) replacing Cushing Hall; and
• Renovation of Carney Hall (academic and administrative).

Two academic and administrative projects are proposed for the Newton Campus (i.e., Law School site):

• Replacement of Smith Wing; and
  
• Renovation of Stuart Hall.

BC Task Force Meeting Schedule for January

I have not received confirmation of all of the following meetings, but this is the tentative meeting schedule planned by the BC Task Force in January. So... dates, times, and agendas are subject to change. [UPDATE 1/4/08: this list of meetings and times has been confirmed by a member of the task force.] All topics fall within the task force's review BC's recently submitted institutional master plan notification form.

All meetings are 6:30 pm, Brighton Marine Health Center, 77 Warren Street, Brighton.

January 8 [Tuesday]: BRA required meeting under Article 80; athletic facilities. (Note: John Fitzgerald of the BRA confirms this meeting, although no notice of it appears, e.g., in the Community Notes listings of the January 4th online edition of the Allston-Brighton TAB.)

January 16 [Wednesday]: Traffic, transportation, and parking

January 22 [Tuesday]: Housing

January 29 [Tuesday]: Open space, academic uses, and summary


The task force was also interested in having a meeting just for the neighbors, i.e., no city and/or institutional representatives. It was left unclear if that would be an additional meeting or if one of the above agendas would be changed to accomodate it.

Did Anybody Else Get Coal in Their Stocking?

Just before Christmas, the Allston-Brighton TAB published an op-ed piece by me about Boston College's history since 1993 of regulatory filings with the Boston Redevelopment Authority right before the holiday season ("BC delivers lump of coal to Brighton’s Christmas stocking").

The result of such inopportune timing? The already short public comment periods are effectively shortened by everyone's distraction over seemingly less unimportant things -- like lighting candles on Hannukah, shopping for Christmas presents, attending Christmas holiday parties, celebrating Kwanzaa, singing Auld Lang Syne on New Year's Eve, worshipping at the college football bowl game altar with an almond-covered cheese ball, etc.

This holiday season has continued the trend: Boston College filed its institutional master plan with the BRA on December 5, 2007, followed up by an advertisement apparently in the Boston Herald on December 10. The 30-day public comment period following that was voluntarily extended 15 days by BC (quite likely as a result of a request by the city); it was extended another 12 days as a result of a request made by the BC Task Force at their December 18 meeting.

It's quite obvious to many people -- from the neighbors to many City Councilors and even at least one city employee -- that there are parts of Article 80 in the city's zoning code that need serious overhaul.

One short-coming of Article 80 is how ineffectively the statute can respond to large-scale institutional expansion projects (such as Boston College's or, especially, Harvard University's in Allston). Thirty-day public comment periods, which cannot be extended by the city without voluntary action by the institution, are demonstrably inadequate when dealing with these large and complicated master plans. Article 80 is being stretched to its breaking point because it wasn't designed with such massive projects in mind.

Accusations and an Admission at the BC Task Force Meeting

The June 19, 2007 meeting of the BRA's Boston College Task Force was a lively, noisy, and, at times, unruly sideshow. While I previously reported on the substantive material presented as part of the unannounced agenda -- and also on a past police log incident apparently related to the individual who caused a disturbance late in the meeting -- there was more going on in the meeting than has been reported to date.

After Mark Alford objected to the meeting being held on account of the failure to provide advance, public notice of the agenda, Patrick Galvin levied a general accusation that -- here, I'm guessing on a few of the details because it was hard to hear clearly over the air conditioners -- one or more members of the BC Task Force had accepted "gratuities" in the past from BC. No specifics were given as to the individuals or the gratuities, although I heard somebody, I believe, mention something like, "tickets for athletics events."

Now, normally I wouldn't post an unsubstantiated accusation like that on the blog, except that task force member John Bruno later responded with some specifics. First, Bruno admitted that he had, in the past, received some tickets to BC games (like hockey) which he had then handed out to youth players when they showed up to practice and/or games. These kids thus got to attend a college athletics game. He expressed the opinion that this was a pretty good thing, and it's hard to argue with him on that; BC even touts such giveaways as part of their community benefits. It is unclear if these youth ticket giveaways were the gratuities implied by Patrick Galvin's comments, or if Galvin meant something else, since I believe Galvin had let the room by the time that Bruno made these comments.

Bruno's second admission, however, was a whopper. He confirmed that his son currently attends Boston College on a full, tuition-free scholarship: "Yep, my son is there. I see $40,000 a year" in benefits from the scholarship. I assume he means $35,150/year for 2007-8, which is the tuition cost to attend BC as an undergraduate. Since Bruno is a resident of Allston-Brighton, his son's scholarship is presumably one of the ten "Allston/Brighton Scholarships" allocated annually by BC to A-B residents as part of community benefits agreed upon through past Article 80 master planning processes. (It was touted as such by Thomas Keady, Jr., BC's VP for Governmental and Community Affairs, at the January 16, 2007 meeting of the BC Task Force.)

I must say that I was personally surprised to hear a member of the BC Task Force acknowledge that he is the recipient of $35,000-$40,000 per year from the very institution whose master plan he is supposed to be studying, discussing, and eventually voting up or down to recommend to the BRA for approval or disapproval. I also find it rather odd that the A-B TAB's article fails to mention this admission by Bruno, although their reporter appears to have been present both at the beginning of the meeting (for Alford's and Galvin's comments) and the end of the meeting (for the ejection/scuffle with Costello). Strangely, they reported the unsubstantiated allegations of "gratuities" without reporting the response later in the meeting.

What do you think about all this? I welcome comments to this post -- as I do to all posts -- but the comments cannot be anonymous (or offensive), and I note that they are moderated.

Zoning... Yawn?

We don't normally think of zoning issues as exciting. But they're pretty important for what people can do with the property they own, be it residential, commercial, institutional, etc.

A nice, though far from exhaustive, discussion of institutional-related Article 80 zoning issues in Boston can be found recently in the BC_Neighbors_Forum, particularly as these relate to BC's master planning process.