Harvard President Drew Faust said this morning that in the aftermath of a dramatic slowing of the university’s expansion into Allston, Harvard is working on filling vacant commercial space around Barry’s Corner, and hopes to announce leases soon.
"We are undertaking a leasing program," Faust told reporters, after addressing the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. "We’re trying to find interesting and vibrant tenants for spaces in Allston."
She declined to speak to the term of those leases — and, thus, to the degree to which Harvard has lowered its ambitions in the neighborhood — saying only that the vacant commercial spaces "would be occupied by those tenants for some period of time, depending on the lease that gets negotiated." The school is targeting properties "that we can’t expect to develop into buildings as quickly as we might have imagined a year or so ago."
Faust also took issue with the notion that the university has halted its $1 billion Allston science center project, saying work on the building’s foundation remains active.
"It’s not a matter of restart," she said. "There’s still activity going on. What we’re trying to do is assess what our options are; which would be affordable, in terms of how to finance the building; how to redesign the building; how to re-imagine the building in the context of changed financial resources. All of that is ongoing assessment. As we see financial environments shift, as we see our own internal definitions of need for science space shift. All of that’s underway."
Talk of the Cambridge university’s finances dominated the morning forum. The school’s endowment has suffered an $11 billion loss, or 27 percent of its total value, and shrunk to 2005 levels. As a result, Faust said, the school has reexamined its books, scaled back its investment risk profile, and rethought the pace at which it proceeds with a decades-long project to build out its 350 acres along the Charles River.
"We don’t have the luxury of turning back the clock or standing still," she said, before adding, "Our challenge is to determine the appropriate pace at which to advance."
