He says he is looking forward to seeing the changes that Harvard could make to the neighborhood.

“The area itself to me could really use a change and a face-lift,” Garaffo said.

Since Harvard revealed its ownership and angered Boston, it has gone to great lengths to repair its relationship with Allston and Mayor Thomas M. Menino.

In 1998 the University donated land and $25,000 for a new branch of the Boston Public Library in Allston, and it has given $10 million to Boston for affordable housing loans.

At monthly meetings, Harvard representatives and Allston residents discuss long-term development plans with Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) officials and planners over soda and giant cookies provided by Harvard.

North Allston is scheduled this summer to unveil a Community Master Plan, which will mandate the zoning for Harvard’s future development.

Backstreets Be Gone

At a recent North Allston Planning meeting, representatives of the BRA’s Backstreets program came to discuss how Allston’s industries can stay afloat after Harvard moves in.

Menino created the Backstreets program in November 2001 to help “backstreets operations”—small and medium-sized industrial and commercial businesses—stay vital and remain in their neighborhoods.

“What’s you’re finding is backstreets operations just aren’t great contributors to [the North Allston] vision,” said BRA Representative John Belzell.

“On the downside, they’re not really good-looking, you don’t really want them,” Belzell said. “On the upside, you can’t necessarily live without them.”

The community didn’t want industrial uses to remain in the neighborhood, particularly if that would mean they would move deeper into residential areas, as had been suggested by some early plans.

They stopped the presentation to voice their concerns.

“I think it’s going to be a very hard sell to get this program concept into implementation,” Chair of the Allston Civic Task Force Ray Mellone told the BRA planners.

Proposed plans to shuffle land use in Allston to prepare for Harvard’s development have also drawn criticism from the community.