One encouraging gesture to the city came during the renovations of the new UOS office site.
The University replaced a number of parking spaces with a patch of grass, eliminating the safety hazard of cars backing out.
“We’ve improved the property in that regard, and people appreciated that,” McCluskey says.
Nevertheless, according to Berkeley, it is not the UOS office but the land that is yet to be developed that makes the Allston community anxious.
“There is somewhat of an anticipation or anxiety as to what Harvard’s eventually going to do,” he says.
“We understand it’s a very large institution and its decisions may not flow that easily, but we would like to know as much and as quickly as Harvard knows.”
“Not knowing what they’re planning is very frustrating from our perspective,” he adds. “We’re trying to plan our neighborhood too.”
—Staff writer Alex L. Pasternack can be reached at apastern@fas.harvard.edu.