According to Mellone, a 1997 incident led Harvard to disclose.

Mellone approached McCluskey about the property across the street from HBS.

“We had this world-class campus on one side of the street, and the other side looked like hell,” Mellone says.

He asked McCluskey for Harvard’s help to encourage the owners across the street to develop their property. McCluskey went ahead, not knowing that the owner across the street was none other than Harvard.

“Harvard had to make a public announcement because they were embarrassed. They couldn’t keep up the charade,” Mellone says.

The University admitted to the press, through McCluskey, that the purchases were a breach of trust, and President Neil Rudenstine promised never to purchase land secretly again.

Allston relations were quickly salvaged over the next two years, as Harvard hired Paul S. Grogan as Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs. Grogan came from Boston City Hall and is a longtime friend of Menino.

“Paul [Grogan]’s arrival was key to all this. His strong relationship with Menino has been very helpful,” McCluskey says.

Emphasizing its power to develop the neighborhood, the University recast the public relations mess as an opportunity for Allston to clean up the industrial plots that Mellone says “have always been a blight on this community.”

“It’s to our advantage to have somebody with deep pockets owning the worst property in the neighborhood. It makes it easier to deal with and develop,” he says.

Harvard began to woo its new neighbors, donating land for an Allston Branch of the Boston Public Library and revitalizing in the Star Market Shopping Center.

Then, in a 1999 windfall for the University, the MTA, strapped to pay for the Big Dig, put 48 acres of Allston land beside HBS up at a blind auction, which Harvard snatched easily with a $151 million bid. The closest competitor was Genzyme, which offered 26 million for its property and an adjoining parcel.

Harvard never had a set plan to acquire the whole hundred acres when it began buying Allston under Bok, McCluskey said, but the University anticipated a future purchase of the MTA land.

“We bought the doughnut and waited for the hole,” Spiegelman says.

Harvard continued to pour money into the community, investing $20 million in a 20-year affordable housing program, its first major gift to benefit both Boston and Cambridge, and then another 5 million in Boston for an after-school program. In the process, the university drew fire from Cambridge city officials for switching sides to Boston.