“We would be willing to look at it very seriously,’’ Zuckerman said in an interview from his New York office. “We frequently indicate to [Harvard] that this is a completely viable project and it will add dramatically to that whole area.’’
On Wednesday a panel of top Harvard officials recommended the university resume its stalled buildout of a new campus in Allston, with an additional emphasis on drawing commercial development to feed off research in life sciences at its academic facilities. The Allston campus will feature a prominent facility devoted to research in the life sciences and an adjacent enterprise zone dedicated to businesses that want to specialize in the field.
The enterprise zone, now a vacant swath of land, is huge: the 36-acre site could accommodate up to 2.5 million square feet of development in up to a dozen buildings. Harvard officials likened the building and business potential there to Kendall Square, which has become home to many technology and life sciences companies in the shadow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
After an unusual period of financial stress tied to the economic crisis, even the mighty Harvard is less able to finance such major development on its own. University officials said the idea to partner with private-sector companies to build out the enterprise park has practical considerations: Developers are better at developing than the school is, and are more likely to have access right now to the kind of financing necessary for such a large project.
The mix of academia and commerce is a departure for Harvard, and would pair a university that methodically acquired land over more than a decade with the fast-paced deal-making world of commercial real estate.
“It’s a great opportunity,’’ said Mike Pascavage, an executive vice president of Skanska’s US commercial development unit. “This is a major new generational expansion of Harvard. To be involved in something like that at any stage is attractive.’’
