|
|
10 things to like about the new Physical Master Plan
|
I’ve just returned from paying the bill at Harry Bissett’s, and campus architect Danny Sniff is admiring North Campus through the front window of the restaurant.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” says Sniff, whose office is orchestrating one of the most ambitious and successful physical master plans of any university in the country (see p. 23). The list of schools that have sent design teams to study the $622 million in improvements UGA has made since 1997 includes Wisconsin, Kentucky, Utah, Alabama, and Clemson. Schools that have invited Sniff to bring his PowerPoint presentation to their campus include Boise State, Brown, and Arizona.
“It’s not a foregone conclusion that a physical master plan even works,” says Sniff. “Take Georgia Tech, for example. They just threw theirs out and started over.”
When GM introduced the physical master plan to readers in the March ’99 issue (www.uga.edu/gm/399/FeatCam.html), I wrote that there were 10 things to like about it. Nearly seven years later, here’s a report, via Danny Sniff, on how the plan is progressing.
1. Novel idea for opening up campus: move Lumpkin Street
“Bending Lumpkin so it lines up with Pulaski Street would improve traffic flow and make the northwest precinct feel more connected to campus, but that idea is on the back burner right now.”
2. To create a walking campus, we actually need to build more buildings.
“Buildings frame outdoor spaces. That’s particularly important on a college campus, where, unlike corporate America, people go from building to building all day long. Look at East Campus, where we turned a huge parking lot into a 2,400-bed housing village with lots of greenspace.”
3. Goodbye “train-wreck” architecture, hello Georgian.
“Before we built the Student Learning Center, which is Georgian architecture, we asked corporate America how they want us to educate the workforce of tomorrow. They said, ‘Shorten the learning span and create collaborative learning centers.’ That’s what we’ve done with SLC.”
4. To replicate the ambiance of North Campus, replace lots with decks, greenspaces.
“Herty Field is a perfect example. It used to be a parking lot . . . now people get married there.
The North Campus parking deck makes that possible.”
5. New school of odometrics: It’s not the length of the walk that matters, it’s the quality.
“D.W. Brooks Mall has changed the way people feel about South Campus. It used to be designed for cars. Now you see people playing frisbee and having a picnic on D.W. Brooks.”
6. Idea that’s long overdue: Connect what appears to be two separate universities.
“The Student Learning Center is helping to unite North and South Campus. That process will be accentuated when we expand the Tate Center and build the new alumni center adjacent to it.”
7. Re-imagining the campus is essential to handling 32,500 students by 2002.
“Fall ’05 enrollment topped 33,000, but we’re so much better equipped to handle that size student body because of East Campus Village and SLC.”
8. East Campus will become a beautiful village, not just an athletics-arts hub.
“With a parking deck for your car, a new 2,400-bed residence hall, a state-of-the-art dining hall, and the nation’s best on-campus fitness facility, what more could a student ask for? The new art school and the addition to the museum of art will add more luster to that segment of campus.”
9. 21st century students will feel what UGA had in 19th century: sense of community.
“If you think campus is greener now, wait till ’09; by then we will have doubled the greenspace.”
10. Best news about the 30-year master plan: We can see results right away.
“We’ve told the regents that everything we planned to do in the first 10 years of the master plan was accomplished in the first five. Thanks to the UGA Real Estate Foundation, we built two parking decks [East Campus and Carlton Street], East Campus Village, the East Village Commons dining hall, the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, and the new Coverdell Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences. That’s $210 million in those six projects alone. On Dr. Adams’ watch, we’ve done 148 projects worth more than $600 million. And we’re just getting started.”
Top of Page
|
|
