In this tale of a $25-million real estate development, Harvard is the big, bad wolf who has finally figured out how to walk through the piglets' front door. All he has to do is stop blowing hard and bring a housewarming present.

Because the University has decided to abandon its traditional belligerent stance toward city leaders and neighborhood residents, there may be a happy ending for a parcel of property located across from the Mt. Auburn St. post office.

Harvard will have a revenue-generating non-academic office and condominium complex, Cambridge will have additional tax revenue, and residents will have an addition to the Square that blends with existing structures.

Final blueprints for what Harvard has dubbed "University Place" are not yet complete, but community affairs officials are confidently predicting that there will be a groundbreaking ceremony early next year at the site, which is currently used as a parking lot.

The unusual part is that community leaders do not intend to dispute the University's plans, as they did with the Kennedy Library, with conversions of taxable property to Harvard's tax-exempt portfolio, with the Medical Area Total Energy Plant, and with numerous other projects Harvard has proposed in the last decade.

The main reason is that plans for University Place are not only Harvard's. From the start, neighborhood rerepresentatives sat in on design sessions, made suggestions, and watched happily--and often with disbelief--as the University responded to their concerns.

In the words of Charles Sage, president of the Harvard Square Business Association and a member of the Community Advisory Committee on University Place, Harvard has made a "180-degree turnaround. I would suspect it's probably due to the problems they've had in the past with similar developments," he said. "You know, among residents, there's still some controversy over Holyoke Center. People call it a monstrosity. But I think Harvard has really learned its lesson."

That lesson has prevented Harvard from proposing for Mt. Auburn St. another Holyoke Center, a building that residents consider far too tall and massive to co-exist peacefully with the rest of the Square. For the past five years, neighbors have fought developers who sought to construct a Holiday Inn and a high-rise apartment building on the edge of the Square.

City officials originally suggested that Harvard buy the Mt. Auburn St. property last year--at a final price tag of $4 million--in order to prevent one of the developments they deemed inappropriate.

"I was one of the people who in a conversation said [to Harvard administrators], 'Why don't you do something good for a change?'" Cambridge Mayor Francis H. Duehay '55, explained. Duehay added the previous proposals for the property were "like a series of bad dreams," and that Harvard was more likely to approach the project "somewhat more thoughtfully."

"They seem to have done especially well," Duehay also a member of the advisory committee, said of Harvard's attempts to cooperate with residents. "At other times they haven't done as well and have been less sensitive, but in this case they seem to have taken the community perspective into account."

Joe B. Wyatt, Harvard's vice president of administration since 1976, said that several years ago, the University decided to "try and work things out" with the community. "It wasn't clear we could always work together, but we thought it would be worth a try," Wyatt said.

"There's a lot of opinions that go back and forth" between residents and the University, Wyatt said, because "I don't know of any area that people feel so strongly about real estate. It's a tense kind of thing." He said that due to improved communications over University Place plans, the level of trust between Harvard and its neighbors has "improved dramatically."

The University will test that new trust in coming years, Wyatt indicated, as Harvard begins to play an increasingly dominant role in the development and maintenance of property in the Square. "Hopefully, this is a precursor of things to come," Wyatt said of the designreview process used with University Place. "This device is an example of a greater involvement by Harvard in the Square. We have no specific plans, but this is a matter I have discussed with the President and members of the Corporation several times. We do realize that based on what's happening [in University neighborhoods] throughout the country, we have a large stake in the area."

City officials recently invited the University to take part in a "discussion of where Cambridge is going and how it could be improved," and Harvard has accepted, Wyatt said. "We have to protect our interests and not depend on random developments to come up with what is best for the Square," he added.