The rats are out in spades this spring in North Allston, a gritty neighborhood wedged between the Charles River and the Massachusetts Turnpike, and residents are blaming Harvard.
Harvard had big plans to expand its campus into Allston with a science complex. But last winter, the university announced that the recession would force it to slow ”” perhaps even halt ”” the $1 billion project. Now Allston residents are living with a gaping hole and a bunch of vacant buildings instead of the prospect of a revitalized neighborhood.
They are not alone in feeling burned by a university. As endowments everywhere sink with the economy, town-gown relationships, often carefully nurtured during the boom years as colleges and universities sought to expand, are fraying.