"Those people who were there five years agoprobably won't be there a couple of years fromnow," he warns.

Slowing the Change

Caught between the onslaught of new stores andthe possibility of new tenants, many residents andsmall business owners conclude that not much canbe done to salvage the remnants of the Square ofyore.

"There will be high-rises everywhere," saysMarc Starr, who has owned and managed the StarrBookshop for 65 years. "It is inevitable."

But coming into a market once dominated bymom-and-pop isn't easy for a chain store, saysMatt Perry, the manager of Chili's Restaurant.

Chili's is trying to compensate for being animpersonal franchise by creating "a neighborhoodbar atmosphere."

"It's not a Chili's corporate bar," Perry says."It's a hangout."

The attitude at Chili's pretty much sums it up.In a business world where only the strong survive,even the most vehement preservationists concedethat keeping the same bartender behind the counterof a chain restaurant is pretty much all that canbe done to maintain continuity.

And changing zoning laws to prevent the squarefrom developing more would hurt the economy.Historical preservation "means less taxes, lessmoney for the city," Duehay says.

The Owner

With the city's hands tied by economicconstraints, property owners alone may be able toturn the commercial tide--and the largest propertyowner in Harvard Square is Harvard University.

Harvard Real Estate (HRE) owns about 15 percentof all commercial space in the Square, accordingto President Kristin S. Demong. That's not a lotof space, but enough to make an impact on theSquare's economy--and, Demong is careful to pointout, Harvard isn't any more anxious to glut theSquare with franchises than are residents.

"The last thing we want is for us to become onemore shopping mall," Demong says.

HRE's solution is to deal preferentially withsmall businesses, Demong says. The companycurrently rents to only two national chains, AuBon Pain and Hertz Rental Cars.

"I think that we're probably balanced too muchto the entrepreneurial small tenant," Demong says.