Even with the shift in approach, the Allston project retains the promise to be the most significant expansion in Harvard’s history.
The plan, scheduled to be presented today to Harvard president Drew Faust and Allston residents at a community meeting, lacks many specifics about cost, size, timing, and commitments from outside developers. But the recommendations for more modest short-term development could mark a new start for a gritty neighborhood that has been promised a building boom for more than a decade.
“This is saying that these are things we believe are doable,’’ said Alex Krieger, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design who helped lead the team as it studied the Allston expansion over the past 18 months. “This is actually a wiser way to do planning as opposed to promising an undeliverable future, which was the case a few years ago.’’
The recommendations, outlined for Globe reporters and editors yesterday, include developing an enterprise research campus on a 36-acre swath of Harvard-owned land near the Massachusetts Turnpike. University leaders described that venture as a new Kendall Square, where academic research and business, science and venture capital could thrive in close proximity.
An analysis found demand for a conference center and hotel with 180 rooms. The team also urged the university to create stores, restaurants, day care, and housing for faculty and graduate students near Barry’s Corner, a forlorn crossroads imagined years ago as an anchor for the neighborhood’s long-awaited renaissance. Harvard owns much of the property there. In what university officials said proves their commitment to moving forward, a half-dozen businesses — including two restaurants — are due to open this summer.
