Roxbury Group Asks Voice in Relocation

Roxbury residents threatened with relocation due to Harvard expansion questioned sharply yesterday the builder into whose housing project they may move.

David Rose, the president of David Rose and Associates of New York, promised representatives of the threatened community that he "would be happy to work within your guidelines, provided that everything is tempered by common sense."

But community representatives on the Medical School's Subcommittee on Housing and Relocation were not satisfied with Rose's presentation. "Everything is being done without any participation on our part," said Robert Parks, a member of the subcommittee. The subcommittee-formed after last April's crisis at Harvard-consists of five representatives each from the Medical School faculty and the community. Also present at yesterdays' meeting were nine representatives of the Roxbury Tenants of Harvard Association, an organization of the residents of the 15-acre site being threatened.

Hospital Site

The area in question was originally marked out as the site for a new Affiliated Hospitals Center, to be associated with Harvard. All 182 housing units on it were to be demolished. But early last month plans were changed so that most of the complex would be built on the present site of a parking lot of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.

The 15-acre area is still the target, however, of planned expansion by the Massachusetts Mental Hospital and by Harvard, Notices for eviction from the area by 1975 at the latest are still in effect.

Last April's protest of the planned razing of the homes in this area led to the Corporation decision to construct 1100 housing units in Boston. Rose and Associates is the firm favored by Edward G. Gruson, assistant to President Pusey for Community Affairs, to handle the construction, but no final decision has been made.

Gruson said last night that about twelve development firms have expressed interest in the job, but that Rose and Associates appeared to be "the most qualified." Howard B. Waitzkin, a second-year Med School student, said at the meeting that a local developer experienced in cooperative housing had approached Gruson but was not even considered for the job.

After Rose left to catch a late plane for New York, the subcommittee passed unanimously a resolution asking that Harvard not sign a final contract with any development firm until the subcommittee has further discussed the matter.