When Alan J. Stone, a veteran of decades worth of Beltway battles, arrived at Mass. Hall as Harvard’s new Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs, he wasn’t exactly new to politics.

But the man who in the 1970s authored free-and-reduced lunch legislation and in the 1990s was a Clinton speechwriter faced a massive challenge at Harvard—forging a productive relationship with Harvard’s oldest adversary, the city of Cambridge.

The most pressing item on Stone’s list was getting final city approval for the Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS)—a pair of buildings planned to unite the Department of Government and its related centers, a project that had topped the agenda of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) for a half a dozen years.

When Stone arrived, Harvard had received all the permissions for the CGIS except for the right to dig a tunnel underneath a busy city street, which would link the two buildings of the government center.

The only problem: the CGIS’s would-be neighbors had opposed the project for years—and took up a last stand against the tunnel, saying that its construction would be unnecessarily invasive.

To dig through public property beneath a city street, Harvard would need explicit permission from the Cambridge City Council, a group which tends to favor city residents—and which had often and publicly expressed their frustration with the University administration in general and for Stone’s predecessor in particular.

Neighbors and local politicians alike said that Harvard gave Cambridge short shrift under the watch of former Vice President Paul S. Grogan, whose major focus had been improving the University’s relationship with Boston.

But Stone personally took part in negotiations over the tunnel, spending dozens of hours talking with neighbors and trying to hammer out a compromise.

Stone took the negotiations seriously. He would not comment for this article, citing his objection to a Crimson staff editorial that criticized tunnel negotiations.

As Stone and other University officials haggled over the underground passageway with City Council members and neighborhood residents, at stake was whether the University and its neighbors could compromise even when the main players were not just on speaking terms but actively negotiating.

Proposals and counterproposals fell apart. Months went by.

In the end, negotiations failed. Stone sent a letter to neighbors in January to inform them that Harvard had decided to build a tunnel-free CGIS.

All sides—even neighborhood activists who opposed the tunnel—express dismay that no compromise was reached.

Although negotiations fell apart, many say that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel.

City Council members say Stone’s direct involvement in the negotiations and Harvard’s willingness to change some of its plans represented progress in the rocky relationship between the University and the city.