Neighbors, As many of you may have heard, Starbucks was ordered by their landlord to immediately paint over our beloved mural on their Shepard Street exterior wall. In fact, many of you have signed the petition online, or on paper pleading to save the mural. The Committee for Art on the Avenue has spent the last few months trying to understand how this could happen, and to prevent such a dire outcome. Though we asked several times, and were assured of the landlord¹s approval, it appears, and Starbucks has admitted, that they did not get the landlord¹s prior approval for this mural design, and failed to respond sufficiently to inquiries about it. This understandably angered the landlord. In the meantime, the neighborhood members of the art committee and Lesley University¹s School of Art & Design (which chose 2 fine arts students and a muralist/advisor to design and execute the mural at Starbucks request) have watched in fear that a year¹s hard work and a welcome addition to public art on the Avenue would be lost to all of us. Finally, we have an answer. Starbucks' and the landord¹s attorneys recently signed an agreement which requires the mural to be painted over by March 1st, 2016. That means the mural will be up less than 6 months, far less time than it took to conceive, design, execute it. To say that we are disappointed is an understatement; however, we were not parties to the landlord-tenant agreement, simply aggreived bystanders, and as such, we have no legal standing in the matter. In the course of this final negotiation, we were in frequent contact with Starbucks and made numerous unsuccessful attempts to meet with the landlord. We have also been in contact with Jason Weeks (a fan of the mural) at the Cambridge Arts Council and several of our city councillors and the mayor. They have all tried to be helpful. Starbucks has offered to display a large rendering of the mural inside the store, following the March 1st deadline. We are pursuing whether the photographic history we have of the whole process from design to completion, including day by day execution, can be rendered a lasting memorial to the fine work of these art students and their mentor, and displayed somewhere in Cambridge. Stay tuned for that. Meantime, our hearts go out to the young artists who created this great public mural. I particularly like how passerbys become visually part of the scene painted on the wall, and fool the eye about what is real and only painted. The art committee refuses to be deterred and we vow to find another spot, and another partner, for a mural along the Avenue. We even hope for, and Starbucks has committed to working to get agreement for, another mural on the Shepard wall with the landlord¹s input and approval. Let us all hope that is achievable. Ruth Ryals, Co-Chair, Co-Project Leader Committee for Art on the Avenue and Stan Trecker, Member and Co-Project Leader Committee for Art on the Avenue