Two of Harvard Square's most beloved small businesses will soon be forced to relocate, according to officials from Harvard Planning and Real Estate (HPRE).

According to Scott Levitan, director of University and Commercial Real Estate at HPRE, the Harvard Provision Company and Skewers Restaurant will be vacating their Mt. Auburn Street location by the beginning of next year.

In their place is planned a $6 million new building half the size of University Hall, taking up both this lot and the one next door. The new building will eventually hold both retail space and University offices.

According to Levitan, both stores' leases will expire on Jan. 15, 2000 and both will need to move out by that time.

The University Typewriter Company, a former tenant of the neighboring building, has already moved to a new location on JFK Street. It will not be replaced by new tenants until a new building is built on the site, he says.

Both buildings have been declared historic landmarks, which will complicate the University's plan to raze them. Levitan says he hopes the new building's design will fit in well enough with the surrounding neighborhood to win an exemption.

The University's current space crunch, especially in Cambridge, and site's convenient location now make the site especially attractive for new development.

"There are a couple of reasons why now is an appropriate time to think about redeveloping that site," Levitan says. "Those buildings are really tired. They have outmoded systems and they either need some renovation or to come down."

As the University quickly approaches the completion of a successful $2.1 billion Capital Campaign, the new programs that have resulted are fueling the need for more space.

In recent years thousands of square feet and millions of dollars in new buildings have been planned and built as offshoots of the Campaign, the Maxwell-Dworkin computer science building and the Naito Chemistry Laboratory among them.

While Levitan says the tenants' leases were terminated, he says, "No one was surprised by our action at all. We've had cordial relations with our tenants [and there was] always an understanding that their tenancy was temporary at least for the past five years."

Skewers employees said yesterday that they had expected the move.

"We already knew they were going to do something, but we didn't know they would do it this quickly," says Ranbir Sangh.

While Sangh says Skewers is "absolutely" looking at other Square locations, he acknowledged they will miss the Mt. Auburn site.

"We've been doing very good here. We are concerned [about moving], and if we could, we would stay here," he says.