What Does Allston Want?

4 February

It's been two months since the results of Allston's Needs Assessment Survey were tabulated and presented to the community. In that time Harvard has apparently lost a ton of money and made public noises reassessing its commitment to expand into Allston, while the City and the BRA have been notably silent on all aspects of Allston's future development. Meanwhile the rest of us go on living here, wondering what our city government and our Large Neighbor to the North have in store for us. Let's not forget, though--even if others might prefer to--that a year ago we were promised something grand, what Harvard's lawyers called a "major transformational project," toward which the needs assessment was a first step.  This promise was part of the community benefits agreement signed by Harvard and the City as part of the approval for the Science Complex--mitigation, that is, for the gigantic construction project unfolding on Western Ave. Whatever else Harvard builds or doesn't build in Allston, we have a right to expect that 'transformational project' to move forward.

So what will it be?  

Sorting through the mass of data collected by the survey, one theme clearly emerges: local folks want Harvard to enhance educational opportunities in our neighborhood. Much of the focus is on helping kids do well in school and prepare for college: tutoring, summer opportunities, counseling and mentoring all place high on the list of priorities. Looking more closely, you can se that other particular needs emerge: immigrants (a third of our community) want more ESL classes, seniors are looking for adult education and other services. Logically enough, people look to Harvard for a share in its educational bounty--and indeed the educational portal is already a small step in this direction.

But what about other needs? Some are routine: people want potholes filled, sidewalks repaired, snow shoveled. Maybe Harvard can help with these things, or maybe the city could do its job better. Large support is voiced for better water quality in the Charles River, though I believe this may exceed the scope even of Harvard. Better access to the river, on the other hand, is something Harvard really could help with, as it owns quite a lot of the adjacent land. 

All these wonderful thoughts about improving our neighborhood with Harvard's help soon lead to that other large process, the Community-Wide Plan (CWP) undertaken by the city last year as a counterpart to Harvard's campus planning. The CWP hasn't made a lot of progress, but in some ways the Needs Assessment offers good advice for how that CWP, designed by the BRA and supported by Harvard, could lead to substantial, timely, and essential improvements in our quality of life. Here are a few suggestions:

• All those educational programs need not only dedicated funding but a home more substantial than the temporary portal structure. A Community Center would be truly transformative for our neighborhood just as the Honan Library was a few years ago.
• Such a Community Center needs to be sited and planned for in the CWP process right now, so as to serve as a linch pin for other community planning. The whole point of the CWP is to take a larger view of our community's development.
• Placed anywhere along Western Ave., the Community Center will enliven its surroundings with foot traffic and activity, and thus serve a major goal of the CWP and its parent plan the Strategic Framework: making Western Ave. into a distinguished 'boulevard' or 'main street.'
• What makes the most sense to me, though, would be a site in between the two centers of activity at Barry's Corner and Brighton Mills, adding animation to that whole half-mile stretch. This points to Smith Field, that vast and greatly underused neighborhood asset: why not build the Community Center within or next to Smith Field, as part of a larger redesign to make the park more street-accessible and lively?
• The Community Center/Smith Field idea points to another need highlighted by the survey: for better indoor and outdoor recreational facilities, sports programs, even a gym and pool. Imagine the synergy in a Center where kids (and adults) could go for educational enrichment and counseling, and also play sports all year round? Now the 'transformational' possibilities are hugely expanded, and we would have one of the most desirable community assets imaginable.
  

   There is much more that needs to be incorporated into the CWP, more to negotiate with Harvard, more to say about their campus planning. But the time to move on the Community Center is NOW, while the Science Complex is under construction, the needs assessment is fresh in our minds, and before Harvard 'forgets' its promise to our neighborhood. Siting and preparing to build such a Center will not only start to transform the neighborhood, but it could give new life to a stagnating CWP, and remind us all of the visionary possibilities we imagined years ago when this whole process began. 

 

crowded furniture

29 December

We live in a small house, an Allston house, so that every late-December a little drama arises around fitting in the tree. I was brought up to resist trimming the tree until a day or two before Christmas, so the question usually erupts on the 22nd or 23rd: where do we put it? The answer involves moving chairs and tables around, so that our normally crowded double parlor gets even more so, and you have to pick your way from room to room. Disused wrapping paper and seasonal catalogs only make things worse.

The tree itself, all dressed up in lights and ornaments, is some compensation for the added clutter, as are the colored lights on the outside windows and the delicacies that appear on the table. But apart from those trade-offs  I find that I like the crowded furniture for its own sake. That's why we have so much of it: three rockers and a couple sofas, miscellaneous chairs and end tables of many shapes and sizes, garnered from elderly relatives and sidewalks and god-knows-where. And lamps, standing and table, old and new. To be frank, our downstairs already looks like a second-hand furniture warehouse, and when you add in an eight-foot pine, the consequences are ... cozy.

My temporary apartment in Montparnasse was an even smaller space, just one room and an alcove, 180 square feet at best. But the effect was just the opposite: clean and spare, with only the most essential furniture and blank white walls. While my landlady's quite antithetical taste in décor gave me--I'll admit it--a certain psychic relief, it is equally true that I spent a lot of time imagining how, if I owned my own apartment in Paris, I would fill it up with the most wonderful furniture.  I thought this while browsing the second-hand furniture market along the Boulevard de Reuilly on a Saturday, when dealers set out cherished collections of old chairs or dining sets, even oil paintings and old silver, a whole history of former apartments laid out in booths along the sidewalk. Or window-shopping the lower Rue Jacob, a fancier antique district, I would imagine the most ornate second-empire interiors for myself, with gilded statues and tasseled lamps. You would have trouble just getting from one side to the other of my imaginary Parisian studio, but it would please your eye, in a homey sort of way, as you did so.

This attachment to crowded spaces isn't limited to interiors; in fact, it's what I like about the streets themselves of Paris or New York or other great cities. In Paris I loved how the storefronts ran elbow-to-elbow along many of the streets, how the cafés spilled out onto the sidewalks and the markets even took over the streets at times. I liked how close everything was, how much was crowded into a small space. These virtues of crowdedness and clutter are not exactly native to us Americans, though I very much appreciate this effect in parts of Boston like the North End, the newly-named Ladder District, or even Harvard Square. There is something warm about a crowded sidewalk, just as there is about our holiday clutter.

I labor to accept the reality that North Allston will never be Paris, that it's not really a city district at all but an old suburb without even a town center. Still we don't have to feel that we are condemned forever to lack urban clutter. With a little ingenuity and the resources of a wealthy developer Barry's Corner and Brighton Mills and the stretch of Western avenue in between could give us a little swatch of crowded cityscape--just enough to feel a part of a city--without compromising our tree-shaded, miniaturized suburban residential streets. With some help from Harvard and the City of Boston we could build a town center, cluttered and cozy, a genial contribution to the relatively new metropolis still taking shape along the Charles.