According to planners, the potential lies five to ten years in the future.

“It has extraordinary potential for the performing and visual arts at Harvard, including a smaller second stage for use by the A.R.T. and others,” says Robert J. Orchard, the company’s executive director.

Megan says one of Allston’s biggest benefits for students will come from entire buildings that open up in Harvard Square as other entities move.

The distance to Allston means Harvard may be reluctant to build primarily student-oriented facilities there.

Megan says he thinks accessibility is crucial, especially since student actors frequently work late into the night.

“Overwhelmingly, arts facilities need to be developed on this side of the river for students,” he says. “But I’m not of the belief that students should never venture across the Charles.”

Buffington says that planners will keep this in mind but that he nonetheless sees a place for student resources across the river.

“I think students tend to travel great distances for things they care about,” he says.

One possibility that consultants presented at the meeting would locate cultural resources throughout Allston, rather than simply placing them as near to the old campus as possible.

Under this possible approach, students would have to travel through Allston on the way to their activities, thus integrating the arts into the overall life of the neighborhood.

Megan says he thinks Allston will bring new perspectives to Harvard students, and vice versa.

“It’s integration into the Allston community that creates a two-way street,” Megan says. “That community has a lot to offer in terms of culture and diversity. Allston has its own history that is distinct from Cambridge.”

As Harvard expansion begins to change that Allston history, Cuno says the integration will take years.

“One should start out flexibly and see how things develop,” he says. “A campus, like a city, grows organically, and one can’t predict entirely the culture of that particular development.”

—Catherine E. Shoichet, Jenifer L. Steinhardt and Elisabeth S. Theodore contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer J. Hale Russell can be reached at jrussell@fas.harvard.edu.