It's scaffolding, white sheets, mid-winter moves and $60 to $70 million.

It's labor agreements, displaced first-years and sprinkler systems.

It's...

Nothing is perfect, including summer school registration at Harvard. And when things go awry, parents who have entrusted their high-school sons and daughters to Harvard sometimes get a bit steamed.

But, according to Christopher S. Queen, the summer school dean of students, the father of one summer school student was peeved for a reason that the summer school program had nothing to do with, inadvertently or purposefully.

Apparently, the father was unhappy because the Yard was under construction--so unhappy that he wanted to withdraw his child from the summer program.

"He wanted the postcard Harvard," says Queen. "Instead, he got the real Harvard."

Students, faculty and administrators would generally be surprised at the father's reaction. For them, over the past year, renovation in the Yard has become a part of life.

Most simply take the path around Matthews or swerve to avoid the scaffolding at Thayer. Some first-years have been thrown into 29 Garden St., far from the Yard, but close to their kitchens and elevator.

Despite the occasional grumbling, however, the renovation of the Yard has quickly become a fixture on the Harvard scene.

After all, the beautiful old buildings of the postcard Harvard that tourists ooh and aah at in the Yard crumble, age and become outdated in the real world.

Signs of Age

Renovation per se is hardly unknown to Harvard. With ten schools encompassing hundreds of buildings, some many decades old, it is nearly impossible to find a time when there isn't some sort of major overhauling of a Harvard edifice going on.

The Yard, however, remained relatively untouched for quite a while. Canaday, finished in 1974, was the last dorm built. Though the dorms were not exactly strangers to hammers and nails, a quarter of a century went by without a thorough overhaul of the dorms.

By the early 1990s, however, the Yard dormitories were beginning to show their ages--some of which were close to or more than two centuries. Even Canaday, the baby of the group, was plagued with a leaky roof and gusty drafts.

Also, few of the dorms were accessible to disabled students, and many had available space that was not in a condition to be used.

And nearby in lovely New Haven sat a picture of Harvard's possible future--Yale. Yale the old. Yale the prestigious. Yale the crumbling, as even its own administration and student body admit. The costs of deferred maintenance there created budget deficits that made it necessary to slash departments.

If there is any heart of Harvard's sprawling layout, it is the Yard, where John Harvard, Widener and Memorial Church sit fixedly. A shabby Yard essentially means a shabby Harvard, no matter how beautiful the rest of the University is.

"For a number of years, the University has been working on defining maintenance themes," says Sally Zeckhauser, vice president for administration. "One place that hadn't been addressed were the freshman dorms."

Around 1992, however, the University began to address them--with a vengeance. Managers from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Real Estate and the Planning Group banded together to handle the massive undertaking.

All sixteen first-year dorms, both within the Yard walls and near the Union, were slated for overhauls. The price tag was considerable--according to FAS Director of Planning and Senior Development Officer Phillip J. Parsons, the total estimate for the project runs between $60 and $70 million, if everything goes fairly well.

Some refits were more major than others. Work on Lionel, Massachusetts, Mower and Weld Halls was begun the minute the first-years left their dorms for the summer of 1992.

Massachusetts Hall, where most of the work was exterior, was done by the fall. Lionel and Mower were also livable by the time the class of 1996 arrived to take up residence.

Weld, however, took longer, as it was completely gutted and refitted. It was finally competed at the close of fall semester, at which point all the first-years living in Matthews trekked across the Yard to move into Weld--ironically, Matthews' traditional rival.

Spring semester brought Matthews its own scaffolding and nail-pounding. Meanwhile, the first-years displaced by the renovation were put into 29 Garden St., a Harvard Real Estate apartment complex over the police station. They may be the first large group of first-years more knowledgeable about Hilles and the Currier dining hall than of Lamont and the Union, despite efforts towards shuttle buses on Harvard's part.

Next year will see a repeat of this performance as some first-years move from Penny-packer to Thayer in January, and others are faced with 29 Garden St., says Scott Levitan, assistant vice president for construction and planning at Harvard Real Estate.

Canaday, Holworthy and Grays will undergo renovation during the spring and summer of 1994, as will the interiors of Hollis, Pennypacker and Stoughton. By the end of the summer of 1995, Wigglesworth and the interiors of Strauss and Massachusetts Hall should be marked in the "finished" column.

But the busiest few months lie straight ahead. "This is our most aggressive summer," says Levitan. "Last year offered us the opportunity to understand the systems in the buildings. This year because 29 Garden St. was online and available, we wanted to use the resource."

Work will continue on Matthews through the summer, Levitan says. It, Greenough and Hurlbut will all be complete by the fall. Hollis and Stoughton will undergo exterior renovation, as will Pennypacker. Thayer will be complete at the end of the fall semester.

According to Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Real Estate facilities officials, the changes inside and outside the dorms will be striking. New wooden windows will be installed in most of the dorms, and exteriors will be cleaned and repainted--all in accordance with an agreement with the Cambridge Historic Commission, which had to approve Yard renovation plans.

Heating, plumbing and ventilation systems will be upgraded, and full sprinkler systems will be installed. Some dorms will also be made accessible to disabled students with elevators or special suites.

Some changes will be more individual. Thayer's unused top floor will be transformed into attic suites with skylights. The Canaday basements will be refurbished to create more office space for student organizations. Hurl-but will get a new entrance easier to find than the old one.

Summer of Renovations

Seven buildings--nearly half of all the existing first-year dorms--will be under the hammer this summer, and the effects have already become noticeable.

Many alumni visiting the University for reunions, for example, had to be housed in upperclass housing, as their dorms underwent renovation. Therefore, instead of allowing undergraduates remaining at Harvard over Commencement for activities to stay in their own houses, the College assigned each group several rooms in one house.

And some high school students attending Harvard's summer school program, traditional denizens of the Yard, are being housed in nearby upperclass houses.

Whatever Harvard would not be able to deal with, however, would be a snag in the plans that put considerably more housing offline on September 13 than had been predicted.

For, in mid-September more than 1,600 members of the class of 1997 will arrive to take up residence at Harvard, and their tuition-spending parents expect more than an excuse and a tent. Harvard, after all, is not a commuter campus. The upperclass houses and overflow housing are filled to the seams come late September.

Many things could delay the renovation--freak accidents, unforeseen glitches, labor strikes, shoddy workmanship. Harvard Real Estate and College officials know, though, that if a major delay does occur, they will most likely end up having to explain it to the national media, as well as to parents and alumni.

Thus, time is a key factor, although money is certainly important too. And, of course, renovations must done skillfully and well, lest the dorms begin to fall apart in a few years.

All of these considerations led to the formation of the Project-Labor Agreement between Harvard and a number of area unions. In the $80 million agreement, Harvard agrees to use only union labor to renovate the dorms and Holyoke Center.

In return, the unions agreed to several concessions. Strikes, a major time-waster, are prohibited, as are protests. Workers agreed to work at somewhat unusual hours so as not to disturb Yard or neighborhood residents. And--the money-saving part--workers agree to take a 10 percent wage cut on all renovations under the pact.

The agreement was a new chapter in Harvard building and union relations, one which both sides seem to welcome. "First and foremost, Harvard wants to get the highest quality of workmanship at the lowest price," says David A. Zewinski, senior vice president for property operations and construction. "It has worked fine."

"I think it's working very well," says Mark L. Ehrlich, business manager of the Local 40 Carpenters' Union. "The buildings need the experience Harvard can provide and [Harvard gets] 10 percent wage cuts."

But while union members say they saw the agreement as a model for future contracts, a step in the road away from the lowest bid to the best workmanship, University officials view it as something to be expanded to fit some other projects--but only a selected few.

And, while all building projects must be approved by the budget office, each school in Harvard's decentralized structure has its own facilities and maintenance structure and way of contracting labor, as does Harvard Real Estate and the central administration.

"The vast majority of the stuff we bid goes union because we can bid competitively," says Kristen S. Demong, president of Harvard Real Estate. "I think we want the flexibility of bidding with union and non-union firms to make sure we get quality balanced with savings."

Union members say the element of quality sometimes gets sacrificed as the University goes for lower prices, and that Harvard is making slow effort to create a unified labor hiring standard. "Is everybody basically playing their own game or is this an effort to move to a more centralized policy?" Ehrlich says. "It's disconcerting and confusing."

A Garden of Eden?

For the second consecutive year, more than 150 first years will find themselves living in the apartment complex at 29 Garden St., which also houses the Harvard Police Department.

Members of the class of 1996 who were exiled to the building on the other side of the Cambridge Common, closer to the Radcliffe Quad than the John Harvard statue, had mixed reactions. Many complained about The Walk (six minutes and 866 steps), while others raved about the spacious rooms, private kitchens and free "29 G" T-shirts provided by the Freshman Dean's Office. "Every Yard," the shirts said, "needs a Garden."

For last year's first-years, Garden Street social life turned out to be a wasteland. Senior Adviser W.C. Burriss Young '55 overreacted, some say, to complaints about party noise, and he shut down some festivities before they could even begin. Most socialized in the Yard, and some, when they could find a welcoming friend, began sleeping there.

There may be other hazards to the residents. On three different occasions, Harvard Real Estate discreetly removed asbestos from the building. But whether it's all been removed is unclear, and the building's long term residents--the police--are a bit worried. Two longtime employees in the small department have contracted cancer this year, and speculation is rampant about whether the building is the cause.

By the fall of 1995, all 16 dorms should be renovated, 29 Garden St. should be just an apartment building and Harvard should be done with its massive renovation project.

But some of the issues raised by the effort--labor relations, asbestos, the need for upkeep--will still be there then, and probably for several years to come as well. Sooner or later, Harvard will have to deal with these issues, much as it dealt with that of the Yard dorms.

And Harvard College will soon also have to confront another renovation project as massive as that of the Yard dorms, as the undergraduate houses, especially those along the Charles River, come due for repairs.

Such problems could become the hassles of the 21st century, or they could be resolved--much as the problem with the disgruntled summer school father was.

The summer school student, Queen says, did not share his father's reaction. In fact, Queen says, the student "fell in love" with the campus and gave his father a tour the next day while telling him about his courses.

"By Sunday morning, he came back to say that not only was he resigned to leaving his son, but he was convinced it was the right place to be," Queen says.