The New England Depository Library (NEDL) is also on the way out. NEDL stores “low use” materials for Harvard and a half-dozen other college and local libraries, but has run out of space and is looking for a “new home,” according to its spokesperson, Director of Communications for Harvard College Library Beth Brainard. If it relocates, most likely as part of Boston Public Library’s new storage facility, Harvard would have the first option to acquire the land.

“There is an agreement between NEDL and Harvard that if NEDL would go Harvard would have all rights to the property,” Brainard says.

Large Obstacles

With those deals, Harvard has prepared only a small percentage of its land. Railroads, housing projects, and industrial tenants still hinder development on the largest contiguous patches.

A large, Johnson-era public housing project stands at the corner of Western Avenue, just next to NEDL in the intersection which Harvard-hired planners tentatively vision as a bustling new “Allston Square” commercial center between the academic campus and residential Allston.

City Hall expects Harvard to leave the Charlesview Apartments out of its plans.

“I don’t think there would ever be an attempt on the part of Harvard or the city to try and acquire or relocate Charlesview unless it came from the residents, and I don’t see that happening either,” says Jansi Chandler, the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s Project Manager who oversees the North Allston planning process.

But Harvard officials don’t completely rule out the possibility of a “collaboration” between Harvard and Charlesview.

“I’ve had discussions with Josephine Fiorentino, the chair of Charlesview’s Board, and have also stressed publicly that any conversations, potential discussion, of possible collaboration between Harvard and Charlesview will begin with a conversation with her,” says McCluskey.

On Harvard’s Charles river property, Genzyme pharmaceuticals has a plant besides the Charles with a lease until 2057.

The plant manufactures a drug called Cerazyme, which treats a rare genetic disorder called Gaucher’s disease, and Genzyme plans to keep producing the drug there for a “long time,” said Genzyme executive John Calvino.

The rest of Allston Landing is cut in half by a large trainyard owned by CSX Transportation, which has right-of-way through the property in perpetuity, and has given no sign it will move, though Harvard is still keeping that alive as an option.

“With the trains you could talk in theory about moves or [land] swaps. At least there’s a potential,” said University Spokesperson Joe Wrinn. “But we have not arrived at a point where we have a mutual agreeable solution.”

The CSX easements have long been the thorn in the side of potential Allston developers. They prevented Genzyme’s plans to expand in the early 90s.

“We could never get anything by that railroad. No luck whatsoever,” Henry J. Fitzgerald, Genzyme’s vice president of engineering and facility cevelopment told the Crimson last year. “In fairness to the railroad, it’s not something you can easily pick up and move.”