Correction: A previous version of this story identified the Community Task Force as being composed of people from the Back Bay, Fenway, Mission Hill and Roxbury. The Task Force includes people from the South End, not Back Bay, as well as members of the Fenway, Mission Hill and Roxbury communities.
By Todd Feathers, News Staff
Little progress was made on Northeastern’s Institutional Master Plan (IMP) at the most recent Community Task Force meeting, as some community members loudly opposed the university’s plan to focus on constructing academic buildings over the next five years in favor of a plan that would center around more residence halls.
The deeply divided Task Force, composed of members of the South End, Fenway, Mission Hill and Roxbury communities, has been working with Northeastern officials for months on developing an Institutional Master Plan that will guide the university’s development for 10 years. The requests for more dorms at the Oct. 18 meeting have been at the heart of the Task Force’s disagreements since the approval of the last IMP, which is set to expire at the end of the year.
“The community priority is more beds [on campus], there’s no doubt about that,” Joyce Foster, a Task Force member, said. “But the university’s priority is academic and research buildings. Right now we’re at loggerheads.”
The meeting was scheduled to focus on Northeastern’s community engagement efforts, including a potential micro-financing fund to support businesses owned by local residents and university-provided affordable housing in surrounding neighborhoods.
John Tobin, vice president for city and community affairs at Northeastern, began the meeting by announcing that Northeastern had bought the Hastings Wing of the Huntington Avenue YMCA building and that the university intends to continue providing space for the Cardinal Medeiros Transitional Program, which provides transitional housing for men.
“We decided for Northeastern to buy outright the Hastings Wing,” Tobin said. “And [Mayor Thomas Menino] said ‘if you buy that building those men and those beds will need to be protected.’”
But after the brief announcement from Tobin and the presentation of a preliminary plan for renovations of the Carter Playground, the meeting was quickly sidetracked by arguments over the university’s building priorities.
State Representative Jeffrey Sanchez of Jamaica Plain and City Councilor Mike Ross interrupted a presentation by university officials on potential locations for new academic buildings to criticize Northeastern for not living up to promises it made in the last IMP discussion to house more students on campus.
“Some of us got together for the last [IMP] process and some commitments that were made didn’t get lived up to,” Ross said. “So if that didn’t happen then maybe the things we’re talking about today won’t get lived up to.”
Ross went on to say the meeting should be used to discuss the promises Northeastern had not lived up to rather than community engagement efforts which he described as “the very things this university should already be doing to support this community.”
Tobin was quick to defend Northeastern’s community engagement efforts, saying the school and its students are constantly doing work in the surrounding neighborhoods.
“There is a great deal that has been done, and that we do on our own to to be good neighbors,” Tobin said. “You can’t just set up a microfund or affordable housing in 30 days. These things take time.”
While Sanchez and Ross’ complaints were supported by several community members on the Task Force, others expressed their anger that the meeting was being sidetracked over dorm issues.
“I just think that it’s really unfortunate that so much of this meeting was delayed because of past issues that keep coming up,” Dorothea Jones, a Task Force member, said. “Even if we don’t get some of these things, like [the previous Task Force] didn’t get the things before, this meeting at least gives us a roadmap for what we can expect going forward.”
But the meeting continued as a debate over whether Northeastern should prioritize building academic and research facilities in the first five years of the IMP or if more dorms should be built on campus first.
Project planners from Chan Krieger NBBJ, the architecture firm Northeastern hired to work on the IMP, said the university still needs to expand academic and campus-life facilities to provide space for the new students who will be living on campus after the GrandMarc dorm behind the YMCA is constructed. Patrick Tedesco, an NBBJ architect, said the university is also worried that there will not be enough students to fill all the beds if additional dormitories are built.
“Beds are very expensive to build, and to build them and not have students to fill them is a major concern for Northeastern,” Tedesco said.
But some Task Force members said the university had already made up its mind and was unwilling to compromise.
“This is supposed to be master planning for all of us, so it would be nice if we could look at some mixed-use buildings,” Patricia Flaherty, a Task Force member, said. “Coming in with a proposal that you’re not going to build any beds for five years isn’t helpful for anyone.”
Other community members, such as Steven Gallanter, who is not on the Task Force but attended the meeting anyway, said more students would live on campus if Northeastern changed its dormitory policies.
“Northeastern dorms don’t permit cigarettes, they don’t permit alcohol, so effectively they don’t permit sex,” he said. “This is the major damper on the attractiveness of Northeastern’s dorms.”
By the end of the meeting, many Task Force members had grown visibly and vocally discouraged at the lack of progress and concrete plans.
“We’ve seen the pretty pictures, and I understand there’s no hard plan, but we’re drawing closer to the time when the Task Force will have to make decisions,” Bruce Bickerstaff, a Task Force member, said. “We don’t have enough finite information at this point to make decisions.”
The next Community Task Force meeting is Nov. 15. For more information, visit www.northeastern.edu/masterplan/.
