Sometimes Joanne McKenna looks out her window at the Berklee College of Music students on the street and wonders, Which one of these kids will be getting a Grammy in a couple of years? At times like this, she appreciates the vibrancy the area’s college students bring to her neighborhood. And then there are the days when she looks out and notices the litter and the noise.

“They’re not necessarily paying attention to how the neighborhood looks as a result of their presence,’’ McKenna said.

In the 21 years since she’s lived on Massachusetts Avenue, the neighborhood has changed dramatically, in no small part due to the impact of colleges: Berklee, Northeastern University, Massachusetts College of Art, Simmons College, Wheelock College, Emmanuel College, New England Conservatory, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Boston University — and more.

Now that school is out, “the neighborhood feels so normal,’’ said resident Rosaria Salerno, a justice of the peace and former city clerk and city councilor.

Salerno and McKenna, who works in affordable housing, live in the same building, a beautiful former residential hotel that is a limited-equity housing cooperative, ensuring it will remain affordable — a big issue in a neighborhood where, of 11 condos on the market last week, the average price was $1.49 million.

McKenna and her husband, who raised two sons here, chose the neighborhood in part “because it has such an active civic life. There are all kinds of neighborhood-based organizations.’’

Salerno, who has lived or worked in the area since 1970, says change and institutional expansion used to be slower and on a different scale.

“Now we’re being inundated with skyscrapers,’’ Salerno said. “The Fenway has always been for the many, but soon it’s going to be for the very few. We no longer speak about housing; we speak about luxury housing.’’

But both women embrace some of the change.

“It’s unbelievable how many great restaurants have opened in the neighborhood,’’ McKenna said.

And new residents are getting involved.

“That’s what makes the Fenway really my home, is that sense of responsibility to the neighborhood,’’ McKenna said. “We’re really lucky to live in the co-op, and we want to be part of the movement to keep the Fenway a place not just for students, but for people who want to make it their home.’’

Vanessa Parks is a writer in Central Massachusetts. Send comments to Address@globe.com.