Turn the old Allston rail yards into a new neighborhood, mayor says

Call it BioWa. Tom Menino yesterday proposed:

A new neighborhood between downtown and Allston that captures and strengthens the growing residential population, biotech giants, universities and the Charles River.

Specifically, he's referring to the 91-acre Beacon Yards rail terminal (that huge thing you can see on Cambridge Street when heading from Harvard Avenue toward Cambridge), which Harvard bought in 2003 from the Turnpike Authority - and which butts right up against Boston University.

Harry Mattison writes that that explains some things a city planner was saying last week at a meeting on Harvard's development plans further up the Charles - he kept talking about the need for planning on "the south side of Cambridge Street" and talked about how Harvard and Boston University are now neighbors.

Also yesterday, Menino proposed renovating the Ferdinand Building in Dudley Square and putting some city offices there; building a green swath from the Public Garden to the Charles via the top of the Storrow tunnel; coming up with a development plan for the Newmarket area and developing a zoning and development plan for the Rose Kennedy Greenway (which might take some wrangling with the Turnpike Authority, which owns the area above the Big Dig).