“This doesn’t seem to me to be within reason, so with regret, I have written to the council to inform them that we will move forward without the tunnel,” Stone wrote in a letter to Mid-Cambridge residents.

Activists said they did not see the outcome as a victory because the two sides were unable to reach an agreement. But city officials said they appreciated Harvard’s willingness to come to the table.

“One of the very heartening things about this process was that Alan Stone came,” Sullivan said at the time. “He didn’t miss any meetings. We felt that someone with a real voice was coming forward.”

In Cambridgeport, meanwhile, earlier this month Harvard opened a new faculty housing complex on the former Polaroid company site—which the University purchased a year and a half ago over the protest of residents.

While the ribbon-cutting ceremony was congenial, according to a University press release a high school vocal ensemble sang and many toured the new facility, some are still angry about the purchase.

At a contentious meeting in December 2001, University officials told neighbors that they would use the complex for faculty housing, but neighbors said that they had fought developers to win a housing project on that site for local residents—not for Harvard.

Cambridgeport resident Elie Yarden says the neighborhood’s main concern now is that Harvard will only allow faculty to live in the building while they remain at the University, which, he says, will prevent them from forming long-lasting ties with the community.

“All we know is that we’ve received 102 units of institutional housing,” he says. “The first time an owner of one of these units is forced to leave because they’ve accepted a position elsewhere, and wish to remain in the neighborhood and in their unit, we will go to court and support them to the hilt. We will conduct a campaign to prevent any eviction of someone who has been part of the neighborhood.”

PILOTing a New Course

Besides battles over buildings, a frequent charge city residents make against Harvard is that the tax-exempt University doesn’t contribute its fair share to Cambridge’s coffers.

But in the past year, Harvard has expressed a willingness to offer more. Harvard pays $4.3 million each year for its taxable land—sites where Harvard owns commercial businesses—and also makes a voluntary payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) of $1.7 million for the 189 acres of land it owns but uses for institutional, tax-exempt purposes.

In April, City Councillors Marjorie C. Decker, Kenneth E. Reeves ’72 and Timothy J. Toomey co-sponsored an order asking city manager Robert W. Healy to report on how much tax-exempt property the local universities own and how much money the city would receive if the land were taxed.

“Especially with the fiscal situation of the city and state, Harvard should step up to the plate,” Toomey said after the meeting.

Sullivan says Harvard has recently agreed to more lucrative deals with its other host cities, Watertown and Boston, and contends that the University’s original home should receive compensation in line with those newer deals.

“Some part of it has to be retroactive,” he says. “Its not what we lose [from tax-exempt properties]. It is what is one’s fair share to pay.”