Tenants of the Charlesview housing complex—located on a lynchpin property at the center of Harvard’s future Allston campus—want to be at the table for any land-swap negotiations between the University and the building’s board of directors, they said at a meeting last week.

This December, the Charlesview board privately told residents they were interested in meeting with Harvard representatives to discuss relocating the building. Just weeks ago, the board made their intentions to negotiate public.

The announcement ended years of rumors about Harvard’s potential interest in the property that had left residents fearful of losing their homes.

Although the board’s announcement ended this anxious uncertainty, it stoked other concerns about how active a role the residents would play in future talks, said six-year resident Vince Anzalone. He helped form a new tenants’ association to organize residents’ interests in anticipation of Harvard-Charlesview negotiations.

“If they’re talking to Harvard, that’s fine and dandy, but I’d rather be doing it myself,” he said at a tenants’ association meeting of about 20 Charlesview residents last Wednesday. “If not I, and all of us, are left up to our very active imaginations.”

Located at the intersection of Western Avenue and North Allston Streets, near Harvard Business School and the athletic fields, the 40-year-old, dilapidated housing complex lies on a piece of real estate key to the University’s future development.

It is at the heart of Harvard’s holdings, at a crossing envisioned by some planners as the site of a future “Allston Square.”

Currently, Harvard officials are in the midst of planning a massive campus development in Charlesview’s backyard. Top scenarios include moving a cluster of graduate schools or creating a science city on the formerly-industrial land.

A deal between Harvard and Charlesview—long rumored in the community— could be advantageous to both sides, as long as Harvard respected Charlesview’s and Allston’s need for affordable housing, said Brian Golden, the Allston area’s state representative, in an interview after the meeting.

“If that site is acquired, it will only be done because lots of different interests have been addressed. The first is to make sure that the individuals who live in those units do not lose housing, and …that the affordable housing component remains permanent,” he said. “And that’s the bare minimum. The other question is: How much more will the University do?”

In December, the Charlesview board told tenants that a deal would only happen if the University arranged for a new complex in the general vicinity of the current one, in the same “townhouse-style” arrangement and with the same number of apartments that Charlesview currently has.

Debbie Giovanditto, the association’s president, expressed hope that residents would play an active part in developing plans for a “Charlesview II.”

“If we can form a strong association, Harvard can come in and ask us what we need and what we want,” she said in response to tenants’ calls for a slew of possible amenities in a new complex, ranging from better parking and new washing machines to even making Charlesview II larger than Charlesview I, which has 213 apartments.

“We need to make sure we’re loud enough and wise enough to make [a land swap] beneficial to us,” she said. She added that the tenants hope to meet soon with representatives of the Boston Redevelopment Authority—the agency which oversees all building in Boston—to discuss tactics for making their voices heard during Harvard-Charlesview negotiations.

Kevin McCluskey, Harvard’s senior director of community relations for Boston, said he believed the board has been straightforward with residents about the possibility of making a deal with the University.