“Looking at it from an aerial map, obviously this is a corner piece that Harvard would like to have,” says Paul Berkeley, president of the Allston Civic Association.

And at monthly community meetings attended by neighborhood residents and Harvard officials, questions about the future of Charlesview have become increasingly urgent.

Josephine Fiorentino, the chair of the apartment complex’s board, has tried to quell people’s fears.

“The residents of Charlesview will always have a place to live,” Fiorentino said when questioned about the likelihood Charlesview could move at a community meeting this fall.

Charlesview resident Debbie Giobanditto says that many tenants are anxious to know what designs Harvard may have on the property and what their future will be if Harvard buys the Charlesview complex.

“Harvard will need to recognize that there’s more to Charlesview than just the property,” Giobanditto says.

According to Spiegelman, Harvard waited for Charlesview’s administration to take the first step towards negotiations—a step that Fiorentino recently took.

“[Josephine Fiorentino] wrote a letter recently to Alan Stone saying that the future for Charlesview might look better somewhere else,” Spiegelman says. “She’s been very upfront and we’ve been upfront—she wants to make sure her residents are well informed…and does want to move too quickly.”

Ending months of nervous speculation, Fiorentino recently informed tenants that she had begun communicating with Harvard, Giobanditto says.

“Ms. Fiorentino was afraid that tenants were going to start a war, the minute they find out [that Harvard wants to make a deal],” says Giobanditto.

She formed a tenants’ association this December, she says, because she was concerned that residents would not be represented in Charlesview-Harvard negotiations.

Making a Deal

If Harvard works out a deal with Charlesview’s owners—something that might well happen in the next few years—residents and board members agree that the University will need to find a suitable replacement for the building’s current tenants.

“It’s not that anybody here begrudges Harvard anything, they just want to make sure they have a place to live,” says Giobanditto of her fellow residents.

But she added that relocating Charlesview would be difficult for the close-knit community, with its many ties to nearby churches, especially St. Anthony’s parish and its school.