"Responses Have Been Mixed" on Northeastern's Campus Plans

This building was included in the property Northeastern purchased in the '90s. Now, plans are in the works to make it a community hub (18,000 square feet), learning center (124,000 square feet), and residence for 800 students. 

The city of Boston has a housing shortage because local colleges and universities are unable to house all of their students. But Northeastern is trying to withdraw their students from community housing by building more within its own campus in their institutional master plan (IMP).

Cory Berg, one of Northeastern's campus planners, realizes the impact that her school has on the surrounding communities.

Q: What is the IMP's biggest goal?

I think our goal always is to house as many of our students on campus as possible and mitigate the impact that they'll have on the surrounding communities. That's why the type of housing that was proposed at 840 Columbus Ave was intended to cater to students who might not be finding what they want in the neighborhoods, and really just encourage encourage people to look at that as an attractive option.

Q: What challenges are there in completing your additional bed count goal?

Student housing is a citywide issue. And as part of the IMP, we made this commitment to add 1,000 beds. 840 Columbus Ave was a big part of our attempt to reach that 1,000 bed count. Currently, our biggest challenge is it's hung up a little bit in regulatory approvals. I would say that's probably the biggest challenge is the conversation around that project, and working with the city and communities on getting that approved.

Q: Who are you working with in the planning process?

The IMP is this 10 year document, and we have this nice force, we work with the city of Boston. The BPDA, Boston Planning and Development Agency, we work with them, and they nominate members of a task force. These are representatives from different communities and neighborhood groups. So, that group is consulted regularly throughout the development of the IMP. We also continue to meet with them with anything related to our campus. We also have a community advisory board that I think was consulted, and obviously, along with all the other efforts that we do on campus, we're working with the Dean, faculty, staff, and students. 

Q: How are you ingratiating the community into the campus with 840 Columbus?

We've hired a couple really amazing consultants through this process. And one is Jada Turner, she's actually a double husky. And she runs this. She's a small business owner, and she runs this organization called Black Owned Bos. And then another woman Hansy Better Barraza, she runs Studio Luz, and they've been hired to design this ground floor of the building. The space itself was really interesting. It was intended to be a residential building with academic space below. And it's really open. Community facing really welcoming ground floor. And so, Jada and Hanzi were really instrumental in pulling together these design workshops. I think we did two design workshops, and one small business workshop. And they were instrumental in pulling the people together for that, but also working with us to facilitate the conversation. We invited our task force members, our, I think, some community advisory board members, neighborhood groups, neighbors, and small business workshop in particular... just introducing to get all these small business owners in the same room talking about small business challenges and how the space could support small businesses.

The parcel was an urban renewal parcel that we acquired from the BPDA (Boston Planning and Development Agency). We took with that a commitment to community economic development. And so in addition to proposing housing, we have we designed and worked with the community to develop a number of community economic development programs. So those are all outlined on our website, but a big focus of that is a commitment to minority owned small businesses and other types of job and skills training initiatives that are supposed to intended to support the committee. So, the ground floor, this is a long way of saying that those design workshops were intended to work with those constituents and make that space feel just as welcoming and inviting as the program that we're designing for that the ground floor.

Q: What challenges are community members on the board bringing up?

Our task force represents many neighborhoods. And so it's hard to balance all of those priorities. We really want to house more of our students on our campus. Our task force members, our communities, want us to do that. And I think this is an attempt to do that. So I think the challenge is... trying to balance all these priorities and make sure that everyone is kind of happy with the outcome. So a number of different issues have been discussed. Everyone has a different issue. So it's kind of balancing all of those priorities.

Q: What responses have you gotten from the community? 

I'll say responses have been mixed. I think in general, the sentiment we're hearing is that people are eager to see a demonstration of the commitment that we're making to the community. And so the community economic development programs, that I mentioned, are really great, and really lovely. But I think people want to see it happen, which I completely understand. And we rolled out a couple early stage programs without even having a building there where the programs can take place. We've just opened up with American campus communities, which is the partner that we're working with on the on the property. We've worked with them to open up the Underground Cafe, which is another ground floor, ground floor of the light view building, which is the other property down the street... It's a really awesome community space... It's been a really great opportunity for us to I think, practice what we preach, work with a local minority owned business. See how that works in this space, because the goal is that we would love to have a permanent anchor, similar to that within 840, and a number of other small businesses as well. So so that's all to say, I think everyone's really eager for us to see our commitment. We've also rolled out this co-op program that's supporting organizations that do community economic development. Those are two initiatives where we're trying to demonstrate that commitment without even having this space.

Q: What steps are you taking to keep Roxbury affordable for local residents?

The community economic development program I talked about is a real effort to to promote promote wealth creation, jobs, training, skill, building entrepreneurial support, that will help mitigate that. The space itself, too, is a space where we're trying to welcome community in so that they have access to jobs at Northeastern so that they're aware of skills, and the different different types of workshops that take place on our campus. It's kind of like a, we want it to be a physical manifestation of the community hearing about those opportunities, and just being more aware of them so that they can be involved and engaged in that. In building wealth and equity. I also just say that, you know, 840 Columbus Ave, it was intended to help students on our footprint. All of these efforts are really an attempt to get our students on our campus so that they're not playing on the community as much.