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So it's come to this: Harvard's grand vision for Allston now includes building a single McDonald's

By adamg on Wed, 08/11/2010 - 10:47pm

As Harry Mattison explains, there's nothing wrong, per se, with a McDonald's, except that it goes in the area where Harvard kept insisting it needed to build multi-story buildings to achieve the sort of density required by great projects. Think of it as the reverse of Boylston Street in the Fenway, where the McDonald's is giving way to something a lot taller.

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Comments

By Charles Bahne on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 12:37am.

It's about on a par with the mini-golf that Harvard just opened, just down the street.

Route 1, here we come!

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By anon on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 1:01am.

Opening a McDonald's is great for appeasing lower-income people while giving them diabetes.

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By anon on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 3:26am.

Actually, there is something wrong per se with a McDonald's. The irony isn't the lack of density. It's that this is where they were going to put the School of Public Health.

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By nightmoves on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 8:58am.

McD's on Boylston gave way to a trash strewn parking lot sans McFlurry's.

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By adamg on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 9:02am.

But something is planned for that land.

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By nightmoves on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 10:59am.

I don't expect anything there within the next five years.

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By Hey Nonny Nonny Nonny Mus on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 9:28am.

I vote yes!

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By Kaz on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 11:33am.

First of all, there's *already* a McDonalds there. It's located in front of the Brighton Mills "mall" (well, really it's just Shaws, Petco, and Brueggers now). The problem is that the footprint of all of the multi-story buildings they want to build but can't afford requires some of the McDonalds lot as it stands now. The "new" McDonalds building will just be closer to the Petco in the NE corner of the plaza so they can tear down the old one to fit in the planned bigger buildings.

Now, you can argue that if they're tearing down the McDonalds, then why don't they integrate it into another multi-story building by making it a first-floor commercial space with the drive-thru running along the side of the building, etc. But this is just going to be a realignment of the current buildings to prepare for the day that they start in on the residential buildings that are planned for the space on the NW corner of the lot where Staples/K-Mart used to be.

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