Harvard’s Boston Campus Bet in Allston Hitting Wall

Harvard University’s long game in Boston’s Allston neighborhood is running into short-term reality.

Two decades after former president Larry Summers pitched a Silicon Valley-style expansion across the Charles River, the school is opening its flagship Enterprise Research Campus into a soft lab market, Bloomberg reported. Much of its broader real estate vision still stuck on the drawing board.

The 510,000-square-foot lab building at the center of the project is just 20 percent leased, landing at a moment when biotech demand in Greater Boston has sharply retrenched. Roughly 70 percent of completed lab space in Allston and neighboring Brighton is available, according to Colliers, a far cry from the frenzy that defined the pandemic-era life sciences boom.

Harvard’s ambitions stretch well beyond one building. The university quietly assembled hundreds of acres in Allston starting in the 1980s, envisioning a dense innovation district to rival Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s success in Kendall Square. Instead, about 90 acres remain effectively frozen by a tangle of I-90 ramps that require a $2 billion straightening project to unlock development potential.

That infrastructure plan appeared viable after the Biden administration awarded $335 million in federal funds in 2024. But Donald Trump’s subsequent rescission of unspent money for the Reconnecting Communities program scrapped the grant, putting the overhaul — and a long-planned West Station transit hub — back in limbo.

The underleased building isn’t Harvard’s balance sheet problem; it was developed by Tishman Speyer and its Breakthrough Properties venture under a ground lease. Plans for the campus included more than 300 apartments, a hotel, a conference center and the commercial lab building. But the optics are tough.

Additionally, the sting of bad timing is familiar. Harvard halted an earlier Allston science complex after the 2008 financial crisis, missing a key biotech moment. Meanwhile, MIT steadily built out Kendall Square, helping turn its real estate arm into a reliable endowment driver.

Swiss drugmaker Roche recently signed on for about a fifth of the building for a cardiovascular and metabolic research center and is in talks to potentially build its own facility nearby.

And Tishman Speyer head Rob Speyer expressed confidence about the lab building, pointing to its proximity to important educational institutions. The project landed a $750 million loan in 2023.

But Harvard is under pressure and financial strain, disclosing a $113 million deficit and bracing for higher endowment taxes. It recently sold a strip mall in Allston for $39 million; the buyer said the university accepted roughly half of nearby land values.

— Holden Walter-Warner