“I think with Mr. Grogan, relations hit a new low because his perspective was just too ‘Harvard has to do what Harvard has to do,’’ says Councilor Kenneth E. Reeves ’72.

MCNA member Roberts said that Grogan was not present at enough neighborhood meetings to give residents the sense that Harvard was hearing their concerns.

“There was bitterness from the period of not having a senior decision-maker at the table,” she says.

Coming to the Table

In Harvard’s long history of wrangling for building rights, the negotiations Harvard did for the tunnel were unprecedented.

Last April, the City Council had a meeting to decide whether to approve the tunnel.

But after hearing lengthy testimony on both sides, City Councillors put off a vote, instead proposing a that a city-Harvard committee negotiate the issue.

Stone and neighborhood leaders agreed on the spot to join a committee comprised of three city officials, three Harvard representatives and three neighborhood residents.

Pitkin says some neighborhood residents had hoped the City Council would vote down the tunnel at the April meeting but that they hoped to get a win-win out of negotiations.

The neighbors went to the table hoping to convince Harvard to change the size and use of the CGIS’s south building—which directly abutts apartment buildings.

But Harvard officials were adamant that major changes to the buildings themselves would not be on the table.

“There is a very real possibility that we could have reached an agreement on that,” says Pitkin, who served as one of the neighborhood negotiators. “By January 2002 it became clear that the University negotiators were not able to offer any adjustments to the building, which is what we needed.”

“Their position was, we won’t give you what you want, we’ll offer you some other things,” he says. “We made it clear this was not a problem money could solve.  Harvard persisted in offering money.”

In early July, after over a dozen closed sessions, the committee reached a tentative agreement: Harvard would provide a $1 million parcel of land to be used for a park, $300,000 for neighborhood projects and a five-year moratorium on local construction, among other concessions.

Pitkin says the neighborhood representatives on the committee were asked to sign onto the agreement without consulting the MCNA, although he had understood that they would be able to bring it to the neighborhood for review.