Fitzgerald says now he was confused about his position all summer, before he decided to go public in favor of the power plant at the last hearing. "I listened to everybody and then I sat back and asked myself, 'Self, do I want this power plant?' And I said yes, because the power plant is linked to the housing, and the people want that housing." Fitzgerald has no love affair with Harvard, and he confides that some administrators at Harvard warned him that even if they didn't get local support, the University might go ahead and build its power plant anyway--and say to hell with the housing.
Fitzgerald sees Harvard as a potential benefactor to the community, and says he's willing to negotiate. He uses words like "trust" and "co-operative spirit" to describe what he hopes will be a new relationship between Mission Hill and Harvard. He sees the power plant as a stabilizing factor, providing construction jobs to unemployed Mission Hill workers through guaranteed local hiring practice clauses in construction contracts.
But John Grady and John Murphy don't buy what Lerner, Fitzgerald or Harvard is saying. Grady lives on the other side of Huntington Ave., the non-RTH side. He represents the Residents United to Stop Harvard, the most vocal opposition to the power plant's construction and to Harvard expansion in Mission Hill. Murphy wants to stop the plant too, but for a different reason. He's Edison's man on the project, an employee assigned almost fulltime to figure out ways to beat the power plant.
Together these two men represent the only remaining threat that the plant will not be built. They have already delayed the plant's construction by a couple of months.
Grady works by organizing. In a show of strength in June, Grady took the podium away from the BRA during a hearing on the environmental impact of the power plant, and never gave it up, to the joy of about 150 antipower plant Mission Hill residents in attendance. Grady's feelings on the power plant are simple. He sees the battle lines drawn not against a pro-power plant faction but against those who want to turn his predominantly working-class neighborhood into an upper class research center. As he said at one hearing this summer:
It is true that the area may end up looking very nice, but it won't be a neighborhood where ordinary working folk can afford to live. What's more the area won't even be a neighborhood anymore. It will become a kind of shrine to a lifestyle for those who think that a world where "the Lowells talk only to Cabots, and the Cabots only to God" is a good one. I mean, whoever heard of the Beacon Hill Little League or the Louisburg Square Women's bowling night.
Despite a strong showing by residents for the power plant at the August hearing, a "vast majority" of the people on the Hill are against the plant, Grady maintains. Still, he knows that even a stack of 350 petitions by Mission Hill residents strongly against the construction can't match an in-person turnout of RTH at a hearing.
Grady says he has only occasionally run into opposition to his own position on the hill. He tells the story of the time he knocked on an elderly woman's door while gathering names for the petition, "She opened the door and said, 'Aren't you John Grady, that communist who is working against the power plant?"' But Grady sat down with the woman, he says, and told her how Harvard has caused "premeditated blight" by buying homes where it intends to put up the power plant, allowing them to run down, then proceeding to ask for redevelopment power under the law; and how the promised construction jobs will only last for a few years. She thanked him, Grady says, and signed her name.
Murphy's game is different. He knows that Edison could stand to lose the same millions that MASCO hopes to gain if the institutions are allowed to drop their accounts and build their own power plant. And Edison, having tax problems itself with the city, is infuriated by the tax package that the non-profit institutions are negotiating in which MASCO would make in-lieu-of-tax payments of about $1.5 million annually to Boston. Edison claims it would have to pay at least three times that to the city just to deliver the same power.
"It is inconceivable that in 1975 in New England, anyone would seriously propose that an electric-generating and steam power plant should be constructed on Brookline Ave. in the middle of some of the finest hospitals in the world," Murphy has contended at hearings throughout the summer. Instead, Murphy offers his own joint proposal with MASCO wherein the institutions would build their own steam plant and Edison would continue to supply power through a transformer station that could be constructed a few blocks away.
Although Murphy and Grady are both in favor of the housing projects, neither buys the contention that the homes are contingent on the plant's construction. Grady calls the linkup blackmail, while Murphy contends that because Edison is supplying electricity to the housing, only a small steam unit is needed for the housing.
With the last hearing over and the BRA currently deliberating on the question of the building permit, it's difficult to predict exactly what will happen in Mission Hill. But there are some definite possibilities.
In a few weeks, after some more perfunctory investigation, the BRA will probably rule in favor of the power plant and grant the zoning variances that are needed for the plant's immediate construction. It will probably do so in part because it wants the housing project, but mostly because those in opposition to the power plant don't carry much political clout in City Hall.
At that point Grady and the anti-power plant faction may literally strap themselves to the pillars of the vacant homes that remain on the power plant site, creating a highly visual presentation of Harvard bulldozing a community. The outcome may yield some political compromise, but it is more likely that by that time Harvard will have gone too far to be intimidated by bad public relations, on the eve of construction.
The more potent Edison will try to stop demolition--but with court cases, not imagery. Murphy says that Edison is willing to take Harvard to the Supreme Judicial Court to gain an injunction if the University tries to demolish any of the buildings on the site. Murphy cites a few loose-ends in Harvard's case: "Nobody has ever proven that the area in question is really blighted and the original urban renewal plan says that area is meant for rehabilitation and not the installation of a large industrial facility." He says Edison is optimistic about winning the challenge in court--"believe me, we wouldn't go ahead with this if we didn't think we could."
But Donald C. Moulton, assistant vice president for community affairs and Harvard coordinator for all of the Mission Hill work, says frankly, "I don't think they have a case." He predicts a speedy and unobstructed power plant ground-breaking for the fall. Moulton suggests that Harvard isn't worried about any of the aspects of the power plant or housing project plans right now--except for the tight bond market that could hold up the project's construction. Charles U. Daly, vice president for government and community affairs, says of the housing bonds, "The welfare of the project is tied to what Abe Beame and Governor Carey do in New York City." But Moulton even seems confident about that. Because of the "unusual financial possibilities" of the housing, he says, he is "optimistic that we can work this out."
More than any man involved in the struggle against the construction, Murphy knows how high a price private institutions must pay to build a power plant. That price rightly ought to be prohibitive, Murphy says, because doctors and power don't mix. He has faith that someone will recognize the dangers of putting a large plant smack in the middle of a medical area, but he's not sure if that recognition will come too late.
"The cards have been stacked against us from the beginning," Murphy says. "There was no mention of our alternatives in the original impact statement--we were never really given a shot. People entertained us, the BRA listened to us, and we gave them information, but they never really did anything with it." What astonishes Murphy and the other people fighting the power plant, is that every city authority has turned its back on their objections, not the overwhelming power that Harvard has brought to bear on Mission Hill