SPACE SCIENCE, APPLICATIONS, AND ADVANCED RESEARCH, 1963-69 229 



Mr. Sullivan. No, sir, u is not my understanding. 



Mr. Wydler. This selection of course is as far as you can get from Harvard, and 

 still be close to MIT. You could not get any farther away from Harvard and be close 

 to MIT? 



Mr. Sullivan. There is a subway entrance at Main Street, and it is approximately 

 a 5-minute ride to Harvard on the subway. 



Mr. Wydler. It is all right to ride to Harvard, but you have to be able to walk to 

 MIT? 



Mr. Sullivan. It is a good point, sir, but I think you could invert it. 



Wydler*s questions were inspired by rumors that Webb had made a 

 promise to President Kennedy. In a memorandum dated May 24, 1963, 

 Webb related to Seamans that he had told the President "that we 

 wished that there were some way to put it in walking distance of both 

 Harvard and MIT." 



The fight for and against the Center raged on through 1965. By 

 a narrow rollcall vote of 15 to 13, the committee staved off an effort 

 to require that NASA could not use any of the funds appropriated in 

 prior years until full title had been acquired to the entire 29 acres of the 

 Kendall Square tract. Teague contended that to require NASA to 

 obtain title "would mean just killing the thing," and Miller added: 

 "You are not killing it; you are just bleeding it to death." 



In filing "Additional Views," the same seven Republican com- 

 mittee members who had opposed the Center in 1964 once again issued 

 a blistering denunciation of the Center: 



The Kendall Square site which NASA has selected is unsound, the cost is un- 

 warranted, and acquisition problems too involved and uncertain to justify the time 

 and expense required. 



The cost of the site is prohibitive. Originally, Congress was told that NASA 

 would spend $3 million to acquire 1,000 acres of land, or $3,000 an acre. Now, the 

 Kendall Square site is estimated to cost $3 million for less than 30 acres of land, or over 

 $100,000 an acre. This is more than 30 times the original estimate. 



The committee action was sustained by the House on May 6, 

 1965, and then the conference committee restored $5 million of the $10 

 million NASA had originally asked for construction at the Center. 

 The Center became operational in 1965, with temporary personnel 

 occupying the buildings in Technology Square, two blocks from MIT, 

 while the negotiations for urban renewal and planning for construc- 

 tion were speeding forward. 



By 1966, the opposition to the Center was starting to wind down. 

 When NASA testified in March, they could point to 387 people actually 

 working in rented space, great progress in acquisition of property, and 

 completion of construction plans. Special assistance in relocation al- 

 lowances from the Housing and Home Finance Agency, the State of 

 Massachusetts, and the city of Cambridge were reported at the hear- 

 ings. In fact, so many developments were reported in the time frame 

 just before the subcommittee hearings that Hechler remarked: 



