The UPPC and its various off-shoots have resumed meeting this fall, and their work has grown more specific. Faculty have requested ballpark figures on how much each model would cost, Thompson said, and one advisory group—on housing—has begun to issue recommendations.

“[Their] preliminary conclusion is that we need a lot more housing of all kinds, and that much of it will have to be in Allston,” Thompson said.

The UPPC has also asked that faculty housing in Allston be examined, an option that had not been explored before.

An executive committee overseeing these efforts on Allston, composed of Thompson, Provost Steven E. Hyman and a number of other top administrators, has begun meeting bi-weekly. Summers now attends these meetings once a month.

Meanwhile, the UPPC has discovered that the University is in even more of a space crunch than it originally thought.

“Even if we could resolve the community problems, there is no way we could meet our medium-term academic needs in Cambridge,” Thompson said.

The conviction that the Faculty needs to grow has strengthened, and various schools’ plans for the North Yard area are already in conflict.

A decision on Allston’s future use would mark an important step toward resolving these and other problems. But the decision would only be the first step.

While several of the University’s schools—the Graduate School of Education (GSE) and SPH among them—are receptive to the idea of relocating to Allston, others including the Law School and FAS science remain skeptical.

“We think [GSE and SPH] are feeling the pressure that FAS science, the Law School and Kennedy School will feel in five to 10 years,” Thompson said.

The work of convincing schools of the opportunities presented by Allston remains ahead, Thompson said.

—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.