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September 9, 2004

Abutters compare notes on Northeastern

Yawu Miller

Residents of the Fenway have achieved some significant successes in their decades-long battle to limit Northeastern University’s student housing in their neighborhood.

Most recently, the university agreed to honor a 1983 agreement to provide low-income housing in buildings that have for years operated as unlicensed dormitories.

The reduction of student housing in the Fenway, however slight, comes as bad news for Lower Roxbury residents who are now seeing a large influx of students into rental housing in the neighborhood. The fact that Northeastern has acquired two dormitories in Lower Roxbury in the past four years as well as several vacant parcels of land points to a new direction for the institution’s expansion.

Sitting in a meeting room at St. Francis de Sales, residents of Lower Roxbury and the Fenway met to compare notes.

“They offer the community the exact same things in every single document,” said Fenway resident Kathleen Devine. “Police patrols on weekends. Scholarships. They’re tokens. They’re showy little baubles. It’s always the same thing. For 30 years they’ve been saying they’ll house 75 percent of their students on campus.”

Devine and the others in the room compared notes with the Roxbury residents, alleging that Northeastern is using a divide-and-conquer tactic by shifting students from Mission Hill and the Fenway into Roxbury.

Northeastern University Vice President for External Affairs Bob Gittens said the university is working to re-establish a relationship of trust with the surrounding neighborhoods.

“My goal is to figure out the right lines of communication so that everybody understands what we’re doing and that we’re doing it in cooperation with the community,” Gittens told the Banner.

Gittens said the university is planning to work on a new master plan in cooperation with Lower Roxbury residents outlining plans they have for the neighborhood.

But Fenway Community Development Corporation organizer Maureen White cautioned Lower Roxbury activists against trusting Northeastern’s agreements.

“They always look for loopholes,” she said during last week’s meeting. “Like in their 1976 memorandum of understanding. They said they’d move students out of the neighborhood. Within four years, they had taken over another large building.”

White and other activists said the university has repeatedly acquired dormitories in secret, broken agreements with the city and community residents and offered token concessions to abutters.

“They say one thing in front of the BRA, but the minute they’re out of the room, it goes out the window,” said Fenway resident Stephen Ross.

Roxbury activists say the perspective the Fenway residents bring to the table is helpful, given their experience.

“They’ve been fighting Northeastern for more than 30 years,” said Klare Allen, an organizer with the Lower Roxbury Safety Net and Alternatives for Community and Environment. “They have tons of info. We’re going to need it.”

In addition to their latest acquisition — a dormitory building on 10 Coventry Street — Northeastern has reportedly acquired 15 Coventry Street, four lots on Burke Street and one on St. Cyprians Street.

“They already own this land and they’re determined to build,” White said.

Northeastern officials have also spoken to a developer about the acquiring the Carter School, a public school building for severely handicapped children. The developer reportedly proposed razing the school and building a dormitory on the site.

Northeastern officials did not inform community residents or elected officials of the proposal for the school, which is located between Columbus Ave. and the Massachusetts Ave. MBTA station.

Gittens said Northeastern’s plan for the Roxbury neighborhood will be made clear in its next master plan. The last master plan, completed in 2000, was amended after the university acquired Coventry Street. Although that plan was due to be revised in 2010, Gittens said work on a new plan would begin immediately.

 

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