The trustees of Harbor Towers have engaged George Thrush, professor and director of the School of Architecture at Northeastern University, for advice on proposed redevelopment plans for the Harbor Garage.

Thrush and a team of architects and urban planners were asked by trustees of Tower I and Tower II at 85 and 65 India Wharf Row to assist Harbor Towers leadership in assessing a recent proposal by the Chiofaro Co. to replace the 43-year-old garage with a 1.3 million-square-foot mixed-use complex.

"George and his colleagues will help us determine what is in the best long-term interest of the neighborhood and Boston as a whole on this site of a little more than an acre," Lee Kozol, chairman of the Harbor Towers Garage Committee, said in a statement. "That has been our central objective since our neighbor Don Chiofaro and his partner, Prudential Real Estate Investments, bought the garage in 2007 with plans to redevelop the property."

Thrush will concentrate on assessing whether Chiofaro’s proposal is "appropriate for the location in size and scale. And he will examine what kind and volume of development would best serve the neighborhood, the public and the future of Boston including both residents and visitors," according to a press release.

In June, Boston developer Donald Chiofaro presented plans to develop the waterfront with a mixed-use complex made up of two towers standing at 660- and 550-feet high, and a public square. The proposal came two years after Chiofaro withdrew controversial plans for two high rises at the site.

The trustees of Harbor Towers have formally opposed the current proposal in a letter to the BRA dated, July 21. In the letter, the trustees said that the Chiofaro plan is "historically and contemporaneously inappropriate in scale, height and density for a location adjacent to two Boston treasures, the Rose Kennedy Greenway and the harbor."

"The key issues here are the ones that affect all of us in Boston, like the view of the city from the Harbor, and the relative height and bulk of the proposed buildings from the streets," Thrush said in a statement, "and, perhaps most of all, the connections that are made from the downtown to the Waterfront."