It's a shift of just a few hundred feet, less than half a city block, but few things Harvard administrators could have done would have please Harvard's closest neighbors more.

When Harvard administrators publicly unveiled a new plan in late October that moved the proposed site of the Knafel Center for Government and International Studies' site from the garden behind the Graduate School of Design's Gund Hall to a site encompassing the current Coolidge Hall and the University Information Services building, the announcement put to rest, for the most part, community opposition to the project.

The positive community response came as an endorsement of the University's extensive outreach efforts on the project, efforts that have worked to smooth what was bound to be a rocky path towards Knafel. Just a few months ago, when tentative plans for the first location were revealed, neighborhood approval seemed almost unforeseeable.

But Harvard's gamble--the decision to show their hand long before they knew precisely which cards they held--seems to be paying off in the long run. It's a lesson that seems to be sticking in administrators' minds as they look toward future development.

With numerous battles to be fought over renovations of the Fogg and the Sackler museums, the development of its Allston land and the construction of new laboratory buildings, Harvard has learned from Knafel to limit its public relations battle losses in the early skirmishes.

The Road to Knafel

In November 1996 University officials announced the $15 million dollar gift of New York venture capitalist Sidney R. Knafel '52 to Harvard's $2.1 billion dollar capital campaign. Knafel, who chairs the visiting committee to the Center for International Affairs, earmarked the money for the construction of a center for government and international studies, a project that would relocate the government, economics and other social science departments to a unified campus location.

When Harvard decided to focus their location search on the Swedenborgian block, a largely residential area in the vicinity of the Design School, administrators quickly recognized that the grand scale of the project would likely conflict with the desires of the Cambridge community to maintain the residential flavor of the neighborhood.

"All off us recognized from the outset that because this project is near a neighborhood edge that there would certainly be interests and concerns voiced by the neighbors," says Mary H. Power, Harvard's director of community relations for Cambridge. "With that in mind we decided that it was necessary to engage the neighborhood directly in the planning."

In February 1997 Harvard held its first large public meeting on the project--a surprising move given its history of keeping plans close to the vest until much further along in the development process, and the limited specifics available at that time. They had no architect, no design drawing and no firm site chosen, but Harvard officials proceeded anyway.

The community reaction to the notion of constructing a six-story building in the garden behind Gund Hall, despite the fact that those first plans were never formalized, quickly drew strong opposition from residents. Another hindrance was the fact that residents read duplicity into administrators' indefinite plans.

The University "engaged comment earlier, at the formative level of planning, [but] people read [each idea] as though it was already done," says Kathy A. Spiegelman, associate vice president of planning and real estate.

For her part, Power, who has headed up Harvard's community outreach on the Knafel project, now recognizes the difficulty associated with going to the community without definite information.

"Part of the frustration is that by going out early, before designs had been developed, there were no specific plans that we could speak to, but we wanted to speak to our programmatic interests and a range of design possibilities," says Power.

One result was that thoughts on plans become "based on rumor." Power acknowledges that, "It's a trade-off that I think I need to work on."

Power is the first to admit that at this point in the process the University has as many questions unanswered as answered about the specifics of the project.

"There are many concerns that we simply have not been able to answer because design development has not gone behind the conceptual stage," Power says. "Issues of building height, footprint, configuration, loading issues, and the extent to which the existing open space behind Gund is preserved [will need to be solved].

"There are a number of concerns that that the community has spoken to that will require more discussion," says Power.

Nevertheless, the community has given its imprimatur for Harvard to take the next step, and indicated their appreciation for Harvard's early disclosure.

"[The Knafel Project] is the first time that Harvard has cooperated with the community," said Cambridge resident Crosby Forbes at the meeting that unveiled the alternative plans. "This is the first time they told us what they were doing from the beginning."

At this point, Harvard and in turn the community, are waiting for design specifics from the architect, Henry M. Cobb '47, and his firm Pei Cobb Freed and Associates.

Administrative Dean of FAS Nancy L. Maull emphasized that the community will not see a changed skyline any time soon. Harvard does not have a final design, has not yet done structural analyses, and has not yet gotten permission from the Cambridge Zoning Commission.

Maull said it is "very unlikely" that actual construction would begin for two to three years.

Moving Through a Fogg

Harvard's public relations gamble on Knafel has paid off, and the University is looking to duplicate its success in other real estate ventures--namely the renovations of the Fogg and the Sackler Museums and the acquisition of land in Allston.

Continuing with their promise to update the community early on in land development, Power released a letter about the museum renovations to community members at the meeting to announce the new Knafel plans (see story, page 1).

Harvard seeks to build "a better museum for art purposes and for community purposes as well," said James Cuno, Cabot director of Harvard University Art Museums.

With this move, Harvard might be heading off potential opposition. Bad blood has been shed over the Fogg and the Sackler before, as Cuno acknowledged when he referred to the University's original proposal to link the Fogg and the Sackler with a bridge over Broadway at the time the Sackler was built. Because of bitter community opposition that plan was never completed.

"That bridge is alive and well in the memories of the neighbors," Cuno said. "It's still an open wound in the community."

The proposals presented at the community meeting would connect the Fogg and the Sackler through a double tunnel underneath Broadway. The aim of the tunnel, according to the architect Renzo Piano, is many-fold: to relieve pedestrian congestion at the intersection of Broadway and Quincy, to unify visitors' experiences of the museums, and to allow the University to transport artwork more safely between the Fogg and the Sackler.

However, this project would require extensive construction under Broadway, and Harvard has not yet gotten the green light from the city. Harvard may ultimately attempt to appease residents by conducting both the Knafel and the museum renovations simultaneously.

Allston and Beyond

Another project that has the potential to sour town-gown relations is the University's Allston land purchases. Harvard ran afoul of the Allston/Brighton community and Boston City Hall on this issue; when the University disclosed in June 1997 that it had secretly purchased 52 acres in Allston between 1988 and 1994.

While it is tempting to view Harvard's outreach on the Knafel project as a response to the sharp criticism it received over Allston, University officials deny that assertion.

Power points out that the Knafel outreach started before the Allston purchases were made public in June 1997.

Spiegelman and Kevin A. McCluskey '76, director of community relations, emphasized that the tactics needed to make a land purchase differ from those needed on construction projects.

"We provide the same kind of notification in Boston that we do in Cambridge," McCluskey said. The decision to develop plans for the Knafel Center were "totally different from the decision that was made to purchase the land that would be necessary to meet Harvard's physical space needs well into the future."

McCluskey termed Harvard's use of a third-party buyer as "a strategic decision."

Yet the recognition that Harvard has more complicated battles ahead in land development in the next few years perhaps has underscored for administrators the importance of community outreach in the next few years.

The theme of community outreach is probably reflected in Harvard's choice for vice president for government, community and public affairs, Paul S. Grogan.

Whereas Grogan's predecessor, James H. Rowe III '73, was a former Washington lobbyist whose strength lay on Harvard's political front, Grogan, who will assume office in January, was once Boston's head of neighborhood development and is known for being a community relations specialist.

Placing a community relations specialist in such a high-profile position in the administration is indicative of the importance Harvard is placing on its community relations in the next few years.

"[Grogan] gives the sense of being an activist," said one Mass. Hall official at the time of his appointment. "His presence will definitely be felt in the community."

Building Boomlet?

The number projects currently afoot from the opening of the Barker Center last year to the building of the Naito Chemistry Laboratory and the Maxwell-Dworkin building would lead some to believe that the University is in the midst of a building boom. However, Harvard officials point to the long view of Harvard development which has shown periods of substantially greater growth.

In the historical context, the University is doing much less new construction underway or in the pipeline than at any point this century.

According to the Town/Gown report given to the Cambridge Planning Board by Harvard Planning and Real Estate, only 250,000 square feet of new construction is currently in Harvard's pipeline. That figure compares with, according to the report, more than 2.5 million square feet completed in the 1960s.

However, Cambridge is more densely populatednow than 30 years ago, and the University mustdeal with a host of new issues that that presents.

City Councilor Kathleen L. Born highlightedthis fact in an early Knafel discussion, pointingout Cambridge is the sixth densest city in thenation, and has less open space than even New YorkCity.

"You can't take more space at the expense ofyour neighbors," Born said.

Harvard seems to have recognized the newenvironment in which it is working, and seems tobe making it path delicately in order not to stepon any toes.

Perhaps no one better exemplified the currentfree-flowing goodwill between University andcommunity than Iten Fales, a senior resident ofCambridge who beamed at the Knafel announcementthat, "I am very happy and relieved to hear thegarden will be preserved. I'm overjoyed. I'mabsolutely dancing in the street.