The group also contends that the project will disrupt Amtrak'sability to develop its new express train service due to the yearsof construction at the station that the tower will require. Thegroup is also fighting to stop commercial airline service atHanscom Field and believes the new rail service will render anairport near historic sites unnecessary.

Save Our Heritage boasts an array of celebrity supportersincluding Joan Cusack, Paul Newman, Gregory Peck and ChristopherReeve as well as former Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis.Earlier this week, the group began its campaign by passing outleaflets at South Station urging commuters to call MassachusettsGovernor Paul Celluci and tell him to stop the project.

The $600-million South Station project, a joint venture betweenHines Interests and Tufts University, had been stalled for yearsuntil this summer, when the development team won a rare exemptionfrom the Massachusetts Legislature on a Chapter 91 license usuallyrequired for development along Boston Harbor. An environmentalimpact report was filed this past October. The project, which callsfor a 500-room hotel and nine-story office/research building inaddition to the 47-story tower, was originally proposed by Tufts inthe 1980s, but it was delayed by the recession of the early 1990s.Hines joined Tufts on the project in 1998.