91 Acres and a Turnpike?

Harvard’s latest buy from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority is crisscrossed by train tracks and cut through by a section of the Massachusetts Turnpike, both of which are protected by easements that stretch into the indefinite future.

The deal was a far cry from Harvard’s last deal with the Turnpike Authority. When it bought a 48-acre parcel just north of the 91-acre piece in 2000, Menino gave his endorsement, and the University was trusted to make future changes on the land only with the approval of the neighborhood and the city.

In this deal, Harvard has consulted less with the city—and city and state officials have been a lot less willing to trust the University’s assurances.

“It would have been very difficult to purchase the Turnpike land without the mayor’s public blessing,” says Grogan, who made Harvard’s case for the 48-acre deal to officials in Boston’s city hall.

But this time around, Harvard’s team, which in January was carbon copied on a letter from the mayor to the Turnpike Authority protesting the auction, knew that City Hall would oppose the sale even before they made a bid. As the cash-strapped Turnpike Authority pushed ahead, Harvard eagerly followed.

The mayor and others have said they’re distressed with the speed and closed-door nature of the sale.

Some have even compared Harvard’s behavior during this deal to what they term Harvard’s stealthy tactics in 1997.

“They haven’t cared much for their credibility in the past, and their surreptitious land deals attest to that,” says Secretary of State William Galvin, referring to the 1997 land-grab controversy. “They don’t seem to have more concern for their credibility now than they did then.”

Galvin says his trust in the University was compromised last Thursday, when he discovered that protections promised by Harvard for the MBTA’s easements were inexplicably missing from the deal’s paperwork.

Galvin stopped the deal at the last minute, as lawyers for Harvard, the Turnpike and the MBTA were assembling the sale.

“We always intended those to be separate, and referred to, and filed the next day,” Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs Alan J. Stone says of the protections, which were added by the lawyers during an overnight meeting. “It might have been our fault, it might have been their fault, but it was unintentional regardless. It was an honest misunderstanding.”

Galvin says he’s unconvinced.

He says he fears that Harvard’s development could mean significant environmental damage or the relocation of the Turnpike.

“I don’t expect that Harvard is not going to develop the land,” says Galvin of Harvard’s promises. “They’re reasonably interested, and they have a reasonable thought of developing something there.”