Copyright The Boston Globe
One of the big knocks on Harvard Square is that it’s occupied by too many big chains and not enough local shops. The same will not be true in a new development sprouting up on Harvard-owned land, across the Charles River in Allston, per developer Tishman Speyer senior director Chris Whittier. During a tour of the 900,000-square-foot first phase of Harvard’s Enterprise Research Campus organized by NAIOP Massachusetts last week, Whittier told participants that it’s important to have local enterprises fill the storefronts. City-approved plans call for at least one-quarter of the 40,000 square feet of retail space in this first phase to be local and/or owned by women or people of color Whittier, who was a tour guide through the ERC buildings for the NAIOP event, indicated that Tishman will far exceed that threshold. Advertisement “There’s a lot of places in Boston right now where you can have great experiences with out-of-town retailers, out-of-town restaurants,” Whittier said. “But we wanted to do something a little bit different here. If you really want this place to feel as though it is somewhere where everybody can be comfortable, ... we think it’s really important to place some roots with local businesses that people know.” Toward that end, the team at Dorchester’s Comfort Kitchen led by Biplaw Rai and Nyacko Pearl Perry has been enlisted to run the restaurant at the ERC’s Atlas hotel and its rooftop bar. And Whittier announced that the Harvard Cooperative Society, aka the Coop, will open a book and apparel store in the hotel. The Coop already has a shop serving Harvard Business School, across the street, but Coop chief executive Jodi Goldstein says this store’s inventory will be aimed at a broader population, including visitors coming to the hotel and the David Rubenstein Treehouse, a conference center next door, when the shop opens next year. Advertisement Whittier didn’t unveil any other names, though he did say he expects that a daycare provider and a fast-casual restaurant will open in the ERC’s lab complex, dubbed OneMilestone, and the Treehouse will feature a cafe. (Whittier said Tishman Speyer is working hard to craft the right lease deals to attract other local tenants.) Not everything at the ERC will have a local flair: Tishman Speyer imported some boulders from Canada for the greenway that will connect the Allston neighborhood to the river. This is an installment of our weekly Bold Types column about the movers and shakers on Boston’s business scene. Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.
