Hard lessons

America's urban universities are building better partnerships with surrounding communities. Can Boston's do the same?

On Campus by Jason Gay

At first glance, it looks like a genuinely great idea: a city university, backed by a local bank and a minority-owned developer, proposes to renovate a desolate strip of vacant lots and build a $50 million housing complex that will not only serve the school's student population, but also provide a substantial amount of affordable housing for residents of the surrounding neighborhood.

That's what Northeastern University has proposed for a stretch of empty lots between Columbus Avenue and Tremont Street in Lower Roxbury. Called Davenport Commons, the structure would shelter 800 Northeastern students, all upperclassmen or graduate students, and include 46 affordable rental and 20 home-ownership units for nearby residents, who are starved for decent housing options.

Not surprisingly, Northeastern's brass is proud of the proposal, and they call it an unprecedented housing innovation. Many city leaders like it, too, saying it's a win-win for the neighborhood. And last week, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) gave the project's developer, the Madison Park Development Corporation, a go-ahead to move forward on the proposal.

But wait a second. Many residents of Lower Roxbury aren't buying this fuss about Davenport Commons and its unique vision. Some of them think residents should hold out for their own housing project, or at least demand additional affordable housing units from Northeastern. They don't trust the university; they are worried about the impact of 800 more students on their neighborhood. And they have formidable political allies: at last week's BRA meeting, state senator Dianne Wilkerson (D-Boston), Representative Byron Rushing (D-Boston), and Rainbow Coalition founder Mel King all spoke out vigorously against the proposal.

"Northeastern has a good relationship with the community in a lot of different areas," says Tony Crayton, a local housing activist and former city councilor. "But what you have here is a clash between two worlds -- the world of academia and the world of Roxbury."

Indeed, the standoff at Davenport Commons resembles an old-fashioned town-versus-gown dispute. Historically, whenever an institution has tried to expand beyond its gates, it has met with community suspicion and, sometimes, outright hostility. Activists in Lower Roxbury charge that they have already seen too much of their neighborhood eroded by Northeastern's expansion over the past few decades. Similar charges simmer in Newton, home to Boston College, and in the Back Bay/Fenway area, where Boston University is based. And this summer witnessed the public excoriation of Harvard University for its "land grab" in Allston/Brighton, where the school used a private developer to secretly purchase 52 acres of city land. ("Total arrogance," Mayor Thomas Menino said of Harvard's maneuver.)

But these local disputes come at a time when an increasing number of America's urban universities are taking bold steps to improve relationships with their surrounding communities. Ivory-tower isolationism is out; in recent years, more universities and cities have been putting aside their differences and working together, pooling resources to improve the quality of life for students and area residents.

"There are limited funds available today for both university development and community development, but if both sides combine, there is strength in numbers," says Judith Steinkamp, a principal planner at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who has written extensively about these partnerships. "Universities are [also] finding out that if they don't work with neighborhoods to improve the life around campus, they will be turning [off] students."

Here in Boston, one of the nation's leading centers of higher education, there is a clear opportunity to capitalize on this new brand of city-school partnership. The potential is enormous. Universities, with their wealth of talent and their resources and zeal for new ideas, have the ability to become active partners in renewing urban areas. So great is the enthusiasm for these ventures that next Wednesday, January 21, US senator Edward M. Kennedy will host a seminar at Boston College dedicated to forging new partnerships in Boston and beyond.

Many of the 68 colleges and universities in Greater Boston are already making significant contributions to city life. But as the dispute over Davenport Commons illustrates, Boston residents need more convincing that universities can become trusted, valuable neighbors. And that leap isn't easy to make.

"Often, [cities and universities] are absolutely polarized," Steinkamp says. "Whether the issue is traffic, parking, or housing, neighborhoods are going to feel threatened."

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It's an old problem. As long as there have been universities, there have been town-versus-gown rivalries. Part of this animosity can be traced to the wall dividing insulated centers of higher learning from the real world of working-class life in the city. But critics may also perceive schools as rich institutions getting a free ride because of their tax-exempt status. And there's always the issue of the students themselves, whose presence and youthful abandon can rankle surrounding communities.

Tension was especially high during the seventies and eighties, when, as Boston historian Thomas O'Connor notes, large urban schools like BU, BC, and Northeastern rose to national prominence, undergoing vast physical expansion in the process. "Residents were moved out," says O'Connor, a BC professor himself. "It wasn't a case of [schools] simply moving into a neighborhood and becoming part of it -- it was taking the people who lived there and moving them out. And that, obviously, is going to create resentment."

This ill will lingers today. In addition to decrying the vast holdings of university property throughout the city, residents often lament the impact of Boston's substantial off-campus student population. According to a 1996 city-sponsored housing study, 66,000 of the 85,000 students who live in Boston reside in non-university housing. And critics charge that because groups of students often share apartments, each paying a cut of the rent for a sliver of space, landlords can demand higher rents. As a result, long-time residents may be driven out of their neighborhoods.

Universities respond that their impact on neighborhoods is overwhelmingly positive. Schools are good neighbors and reliable landlords, they argue, with their own security forces, their own sanitation crews, and a vested interest in maintaining a high quality of life. Many university facilities and events -- libraries, theatrical productions, and sporting contests -- are open to the public. There's also the considerable economic contribution of the university community. A 1997 report by Urban Land magazine, cowritten by UMass's Steinkamp, stated that BC alone brings $62.1 million annually into the city of Newton.

These contributions to city life have vastly improved town-gown relationships from their condition a generation ago, university leaders contend. "Where there once was a wall of animosity, there are now only pockets of animosity," says long-time BU spokesman Kevin Carleton.

But as urban universities continue to grow and need space, their relationships with surrounding communities will be tested. An expanding institution must decide whether to work with existing fiscal and land resources or venture outside -- a choice Urban Land described as "walling itself off or improving its neighborhood."

At Worcester's Clark University, school officials, beset by safety issues in the surrounding community, launched the University Park Partnership, a collaborative effort that enlists the resources of the school, the city, and local businesses and residents to revitalize the neighborhood. Private donations, as well as state and federal grants, have been used to renovate housing and establish new businesses. Clark has also offered scholarships to any neighborhood child who is accepted to the university.

Similar outreach is occurring at other schools. Fitchburg State, in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, has offered loans and incentives to local homeowners to improve their properties. Yale University, in New Haven, has established a $50 million program to kick-start area nonprofits and small businesses. Closer to home, both Northeastern and BU have promised more scholarships to graduates of Boston's public schools. And Harvard University recently engineered the sale of 100 formerly rent-controlled units to the city of Cambridge to be used as affordable housing.

But winning community support remains a delicate and often thorny task for many universities. "The university offers substantial economic and cultural benefits to the city," says Harvard's community relations director, Mary Power. "Yet while the vast majority of students are housed, and there has been minimal growth in recent years, whenever there is change, issues may arise." Northeastern spokeswoman Janet Hookailo agrees: "Whenever you have a large institution in a neighborhood, there's going to be tension."

BU is experiencing such tension now; the university faces a potential standoff over plans to develop its 10.4-acre Comm Ave armory site into a 750-bed student dormitory and athletic complex. When the project is completed, residents of nearby Audubon Circle want BU to return all university-owned off-campus housing to the neighborhood, even though the school has spent millions in the area.

"Rather than spreading its tenants out into the neighborhoods, BU should be building dormitories and housing on its own property," says Audubon Circle activist Kathy Greenough.

Similar sentiments surround Northeastern's proposal for Lower Roxbury. Some residents there don't see why Northeastern won't simply build on its own property and leave the vacant city-owned parcels to the community to develop. Others charge that the city, particularly the BRA, has steamrolled the dormitory-affordable housing project without addressing local concerns. (Activists have filed a formal complaint regarding Davenport Commons to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the BRA is requiring the project's developers to meet with community leaders in the next 30 days to iron out the dispute.) "Everybody knows this thing was greased," says Pat Cusick, the executive director of the South End Neighborhood Action Program.

Northeastern officials respond that the proposal is a smart, much-needed addition to the community, and say the university has respected neighborhood concerns throughout the planning process. But the early lessons from Davenport Commons show that the new era of university investment in urban neighborhoods may take more than good intentions.

"My hope is that despite the worst possible start, the community and the university can work together with mutual respect and advantage," Cusick says. "But we're a long way from it."

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.