A State report on the future of Allston, which should have been released the week before that purchase, has not yet appeared.

The Cambridge Planning Board’s December 7 vote supporting Harvard’s right to go ahead with its plans in Riverside has not deterred Kevin Hill from pursuing a strategy of hardline opposition to those plans.

Hill also developed an alternative plan for the section of Harvard’s plan that abuts Riverside Place, where members of his and other long-term Cambridge families have their homes.

In September, the Riverside Neighborhood Association (RNA) took two votes in support of Kevin Hill’s alternative plan. And the RNA says it will continue to back this plan. RNA President Lawrence Adkins says, “We always support the abuttors.”

But will the RNA waver under pressure? Kevin Hill is not worried about that, but in any case he says: “I’m not putting my fate into anybody’s hands. My fate and the fate of the abuttors lies in our own hands.”

Of Harvard and the city agencies, he says: “I already did what you asked me to - I’ve given you an opportunity to deliberate - they know I have the right of ethics on my side, of law on my side…. They don’t want me as an [expletive deleted] enemy either.” “When you attack my family you’re attacking the community.”

In effect, the abuttors want to undo the height limits set by the “compromise” worked out just before the 2003 city elections. This was worked out behind closed doors by City and Harvard officials and representatives of the Riverside Neighbor-hood Association (RNA).

At that time a number of people objected that this process violated the Open Meetings Law. Roy Bercaw also pointed to the fact that City land was effectively sold without open bidding.

An Oversight Committee was set up by the city’s Development Department . This is a typical mixed commission of neighborhood residents and city officials whose role is to reach consensus and smooth the way for development, in this case by Harvard.

The Oversight Committee meeting of January 12 was chaired and dominated by Councilor Anthony Galluccio.

No one dissented as one community member said, “If we show Harvard we’ll stand by this, that will help them… . Let’s make this precedent setting.” Galluccio suggested there should be a meeting of abuttors with City traffic and development officials. Kevin Hill said, “you should have invited us first.”

Hill put forth a series of alternative plans for the Mahoney’s site, as he has been doing since September at RNA meetings. His presentations are often put at the end of the agenda. The University is trying to ignore Hill and the abuttors.

May we see that report?

“The options for the neighbors are limited, aside from a well-funded legal team,” Bercaw thinks. “One option is to find a state or US official who is willing and able to order a complete investigation of the councilors and the Manager. That is unlikely….

“Even if the agreement is violated by Harvard, how can they be forced to comply? “The City has unlimited options since they no longer comply with any legal restrictions or requirements. It looks like the City simply grants to Harvard whatever they ask for.” Last summer, the state Executive Office of Transportation and Construction commissioned a feasibility study on "reconfiguring" transportation uses on the Allston land which Harvard had bought from the Turnpike Authority—51 acres including the rail yards, 3000 feet of the Mass Pike, the Cambridge/Allston toll plaza and booths, and all the riverfront land to the Grand Junction Railroad bridge over the Charles.

That study was due on December 31.

Marilyn Wellons, active with Friends of the White Geese and other Riverside issues, has twice requested a copy of the study. So far she has received no response from EOTC. Meanwhile, she says, the beloved white geese are “literally starving to death,” because in carrying out alterations of the riverbank, the State is blocking off access to their food sources. Wellons is not the only one who thinks that the feasibility study may point to the Grand Junction bridge as the future exit for the Mass. Turnpike.

At the beginning of January, Harvard announced that it had purchased the Doubletree, a midrise hotel near the entrance to the Mass. Turnpike. The Globe reported they paid $75 million.

The university is also pushing to evict Kmart. from the shopping center at 400 Western Avenue, which it owns. The store’s 25-year lease as an obstacle to their plans.

Thomas’s promises

Harvard’s Tom Lucey has said, “We want to house more of our grad students, and Harvard University has committed to creating a significant public space and affordable housing.” No undergraduates will be housed in the new buildings, only graduate students and university staff.

But promises that Harvard makes are not always kept. Before Ten Mount Auburn was built, they said that undergrad students would not live there. In 1985 Harvard planners sponsored a community meeting, where they declared that, for many years into the future, the university had no further development plans for the neighborhood. Within two years they had two more projects underway, and had moved undergrads “temporarily” into Ten Mt Auburn.

Many of these students are themselves unhappy with Harvard’s activities in the neighborhood. During the recent election, Green-Rainbow candidate Carolina Johnson found that residents of her former dorm, Mather House, felt that development planned for the Grant Street and Mahoney’s sites would overwhelm the community and ruin it.