10 Jun 2025

A Decade to Approval: Harvard’s Allston Campus Plan Explained

Q+A with Andy O'Brien and Kate Norian-Loosian
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by Shona Simkin

In mid-April, the Boston Zoning Commission unanimously approved the 2025-2035 Harvard Allston Campus Institutional Master Plan. We spoke with two key Harvard Business School staff members, Andy O’Brien (chief of Operations) and Kate Norian-Loosian (senior director of planning and design) to learn more about this once-in-a-decade milestone.

What is the Institutional Master Plan (IMP)?
AO: Institutions that are major land holders in Boston—hospitals and higher education campuses—need to submit an IMP to the city every 10 years. It’s a plan that gives the city an overview—a zoning overlay—of the property and our plans for development. It gives the city an idea of what could be coming up for Harvard and Allston. HBS joins with other Harvard entities here in Allston, like Athletics, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) in submitting a plan.

KL: There’s a lot of background that we offer in the IMP—it provides context for the City of Boston Planning Department to understand Harvard as an institution and as a real estate holder in the city. It highlights all our buildings, and plans for buildings, as well as things like green space, tree coverage, sustainability efforts, solar panels, pedestrian and car passageways, traffic patterns, and things like storm water management. In particular our tree canopy is a real anchor for Harvard’s presence in Allston, and the IMP lays out every tree and its species.

What are some highlights of the plan?
AO: The most significant piece to HBS’s part in the overall IMP is called Building C on Ohiri Field. It also includes our renovation plans for Chase and McCulloch residence halls and Dillon House. Chase and McCulloch are two original McKim Mead and White residence halls that were originally built in 1926 and they haven’t had a significant renovation for about 45 years.

KL: Building C will help better define a faculty precinct on campus while enriching the faculty ecosystem with more integrated work spaces for the doctoral program and research associates. The other major projects in the IMP are put forth by HU Athletics (an addition to the football stadium, a new rugby building, and a new racquet sports center) and by the Central Administration (the Gateway Building at Barry’s Corner).

What is the timeline?
KL: We don’t have a definitive timeline for anything except the renovations to Chase, McCulloch, and Dillon, which will take place over the next 15 months. You can see the IMP as our campus framework plan; the most logical next step in development. If and when we're ready to grow, this is how we’d do it.

Building C was in the last IMP when it was approved 10 years ago. If we decide to move forward in the next 10 years, as long as the footprint and size of the building are similar to what’s in the IMP, we would likely get approval to move forward. If there are any dramatic changes then we would need to file an amendment. Much of this year’s plan is the same as what was approved 10 years ago. This is really a placeholder for the future.

AO: Given the current financial situation it’s unlikely that the University will be pursuing any large new buildings in the next five years, but it’s in our best interest to include them in the IMP because of the 10-year window.

What goes into planning and creating the IMP?
AO: About a year and a half to two years before it’s due, we have a very focused planning effort across HBS campus in an effort we called Campus Framework Planning. We have multiple meetings with the many stakeholders at HBS. The total number of people we engage in these discussions number in the hundreds. We also engage people across Harvard and Allston—community members, regulatory agencies, city agencies, teams from the various schools and development efforts—hundreds of people. The purpose of the HBS Campus Framework Plan is to define our piece of the puzzle—how does what we have planned interact with SEAS, with the ERC, with Athletics plans for their property in Allston?

KL: I call it a multi-gated process. There’s a preparation process for each of the Allston stakeholders, then joining it all together, starting regulatory and community notifications and meetings, and a final review before it’s submitted. We submitted the plan in November of 2024, it was approved by the City of Boston Planning Department on March 13, and by the Zoning Commission on April 16.

AO: Once it’s approved, you can start the process for a building project. That’s another two-year process of planning, design, permitting, and approvals even before you can start construction. The last major building we opened on campus, Klarman Hall, was in the IMP 10 years ago and took about two years to construct.

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