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Master plan aims at building connections

This story marks the first of a series of in-depth stories on the master plan that the Gazette plans to run over the next several months.

The next story will focus on how the new Science Complex will allow the University's world-class research enterprise to grow in a way that may forge new and unexpected links between Academic Affairs and Health Affairs.

Picture the master plan as a novel, and it is easy to see it had many authors.

When the process began in summer of 1998, the late Michael Hooker insisted that it be both open-ended and inclusive.

That is part of the reason why its writing took more than three years to complete, and why its pages are filled with the invisible pen marks of hundreds of people who had a say in shaping the plan before official adoption by the University Board of Trustees last spring.

No one could have predicted the amount of revisions and tinkering that would take place when the process started.

But, as Jonathan Howes sees it, the intense debate over the campus plan reflected the passion that so many people who work, study and live here feel toward Carolina. And that's a good thing.

"People care so much about this place that they took time out of their already busy lives to help us get it right," said Howes, who chaired the master plan process as special assistant to the chancellor.

Having so many people involved did not make the process any shorter or easier, Howes said. But at the same time, there is no question their involvement helped to produce a better plan.

"From the outset, our goal was not to develop a master plan that people could live with," Howes said. "Our goal was to develop a plan people would not want to live without. We think we succeeded."

In fall 1999, planners met with a group to discuss plans for north campus. There was talk about creating an arts corridor around Memorial Hall that would be the site of an expanding array of concerts and exhibits and plays of a quality to draw hundreds of visitors from around the state.

Those visitors, though, would need parking and that would be a problem, considering the closest parking lot to Memorial will be torn up to make the greenway that will become the centerpiece of the arts corridor.

Adam Gross, one of the architects with Ayers Saint Gross who led the project, talked about the various options.

One option would be to acquire sorority and fraternity houses on the west side of Columbia Street and turn those properties into parking spaces. Inviting and practical, from a planner's eye, but a political Pandora's box.

Another option would be to build a multi-story parking garage on campus, but the idea of erecting a looming concrete structure amid centuries-old brick buildings seemed tantamount to splashing paint across the face of the "Mona Lisa."

A third option Gross raised was an underground parking garage, perhaps under the grass and trees of the proposed arts corridor.

Will not work, people said. The ground under the north campus is nothing but rock.

Not so fast, said Vincas Steponaitis, an anthropology professor who directs the University's research labs of archaeology. As part of his job, Steponaitis had made it his business to monitor construction sites on north campus and he had peered into enough deep trenches to know that a mantle of solid rock was not what was down there.

Chapel Hill sits on what was once nothing but hard rock, but much of the rock has weathered and turned into clay, Steponaitis said. That is why at one site on campus, you could dig down and encounter nothing but clay, and at another site hit a boulder the size of a railroad car.

It is unpredictable what you may find, Steponaitis said, but inexcusable not to look.

And everyone agreed.

"What got me started was the Ackland Museum," Steponaitis said. "It is one of the gems on campus and absolutely needs close-in parking. The option of acquiring new property seemed impractical and the parking deck posed aesthetic problems so the underground garage struck me as a sensible solution."

The conversation opened minds to a new possibility, said Linda Convissor, now coordinator of local relations who was project manager for the campus master plan.

Suggestions such as the one made by Steponaitis were heard, weighed and incorporated into official thinking so seamlessly and so often that it is hard to keep track of the many different sources.

"It was just the way the process worked," Convissor said. "We began with architects' drawings, but what we ended up with is a plan that bears the imprint of many, many different hands from within the University and the larger community."

An underlying -- and overriding -- theme

Still, after all those hours of study, and all those hands at play, there is no finished document that is the master plan.

It is less of a blueprint for growth than a guide for campus growth into the next generation and beyond, anywhere from 30 to 50 years.

In a sense, the master plan is a not-yet-completed map that guides by core principles.

The "campus development plan," reluctantly approved by the Chapel Hill Town Council on Oct. 3, is the first leg of a long journey. Unlike the concept-driven master plan, the development plan spells out in intricate detail the projects the University intends to build over the next decade.

Many of those projects will be funded all or in part with the nearly half a billion dollars that represents the University's share of the $3.1 billion statewide capital construction bond issue for higher education that voters overwhelmingly approved last November.

The University plans to secure another half a billion dollars to pay for projects identified in the development plan from non-state sources including private donations and research-related grants. Many buildings require a complex combination of both public and private funds.

Funding for the underground parking garage, for instance, still exists only as an idea and is not part of the development plan. There is no money in the pipeline for it yet, and there may not be for many years. State appropriations will not pay for parking facilities.

Most faculty or staff who have been here any length of time have read something about the overarching concepts of the master plan and the nitty gritty details of the development plan that will be used to implement it.

Now that both plans have been approved, though, many employees, understandably, will begin to try to figure out what all these changes will mean for them.

How will it make the campus not just bigger but better?

How will it affect me? My job? And yes, my parking space?

The answers to some of these questions will ultimately take years to reveal. Much is still not known and cannot be known because the master plan, even years from now, will remain a work in progress.

Understanding may be hampered, too, by technical words that many on campus may not know.

Yet, one single piece of thematic imagery that seems to emerge time and time again is that of connectivity.

When addressing the question of "sustainability," for instance, the plan is really talking about finding ways to connect the campus back to nature even as it grows, particularly on the south side of campus where that connection has been covered over by too much concrete and asphalt.

When talking about "historical preservation," the plan is in a way connecting the future to the past by making sure new designs mesh with old architecture.

When talking about enhancing the "intellectual climate," the plan is focusing attention on the need to join academic affairs on the historic north end of campus with health affairs on the south end through a new Science Complex. Inside the new buildings, interdisciplinary research will take place in emerging areas such as genomics. At the same time, the buildings themselves, along with a system of walkways and pedestrian bridges, will create a physical link between the north and south ends of campus.

When stressing the importance of "mixed use development," the plan is to connect work, play and living in a shared setting.

The theme of connectivity will serve as a touchstone for this story and the other stories that will appear in a three-part series on the master plan running in the Gazette in coming issues.

A battle among the good, the bad and the ugly

From the point of view of architects from Ayers Saint Gross, master plan consultants, the blueprint boiled down to its essence is an attempt to resolve a conflict among the good, bad and ugly.

And on the Carolina campus, the good can be found in abundance on the north side of campus; the bad shows up on the south side in comparison with its glaring lack of the one element that makes its northern neighbor so appealing.

That element, Adam Gross said, is nature.

One way to experience what Gross is talking about is to stroll across McCorkle Place. Take note of the century-old oaks, the historic statues, the chirping robins. Pay attention to the squirrel darting in front of you. Observe the student sitting alone on a stonewall with a book or the group flinging a Frisbee across the grassy quad.

Then go to Manning Drive.

Here, you will find a lot of the bad and almost all of the ugly.

Here, the scene seems more like a major city, sprawling buildings and parking decks, and streets crawling with bumper-to-bumper traffic. People gather here, but only at crosswalks on their way to somewhere else. In place of green grass and red bricks there is concrete everywhere you look, in the bleached color of chalk.

The simplest way to transform south campus to look more like north campus, planners have said, is to transpose all the characteristics from north campus that are now missing.

Trees. Grass. And students.

There are reasons why the two sides of campus evolved as they did, but those reasons are no excuse to keep it that way. The master plan will give Carolina the chance to rectify the planning mistakes that have since plagued south campus.

That is why new residence halls are under construction on Manning Drive.

That is why green space will be added on the southern fringe where Odum Village now sits.

That is why there will be an elaborate system of pedestrian walkways lined with more trees and grass and flowing water than pavement and rushing traffic.

If people are the lifeblood of the campus, the expanded system of interconnecting walkways and paths is the circulation system that can quickly transport them anywhere on campus they need to be.

This imagery of connectivity comes into sharpest focus in the area in and around Kenan Stadium. The structure sits on the 50-yard-line of campus, in the floor of the sloping valley dividing the north end from the south end, the old from the new, the academic affairs side from health affairs.

Two parking decks will be erected on either side of the stadium that will make room for plenty of cars. But planners get just as excited when talking about the foot traffic that will one day stream across the deck roofs.

In fact, the roofs will not be roofs at all, at least not in the way people usually think of them. They will be flat, sodded and covered with both playing fields and walkways. And because both decks will sit in depressions, the grade of the roofs will match that of South Road, which will eliminate the steep climbs that walkers now face going back and forth between the two sides of campus.

The parking garages have been called "linchpins," their roofs "pedestrian bridges."

In addition, the sodded roofs will sop up rainwater, thus preventing the stormwater runoff that can lead to pollution and flooding.

Some 20 acres of surface parking lots will be ripped out, with the land to be either returned to nature or used as building sites.

Much of the parking will be replaced with parking decks. Surface parking lots that remain will be fitted with a porous material that will allow rainwater to seep back into the underground water supply.

The top floor of one of the decks, the Ramshead, will also be out of the ordinary. It will feature a student dining hall, a recreation center and a grocery store. The idea is to create a range of services in an area convenient to the students who will be living on the south side of campus.

Here, in this single project, the separate goals of sustainability and mixed use will join as one.

A happy ending

For Chancellor James Moeser, the master plan designed for the future is really about creating the right kind of physical environment to carry out longstanding missions of the past.

The University exists to serve the needs of the state. Those needs are growing, and thus the University must grow at a pace to meet them.

It must not just grow, but grow in a way that builds on its special charm and beauty.

That may seem unimportant to some who do not understand how the visual experience of the campus is a part of its intellectual climate.

There are many reasons why people flock here to teach and study and explore, not the least of which is what they see and experience when they first arrive.

"In the end, what we are really talking about is being faithful stewards of a state treasure," Moeser said. "And that stewardship compels us to create a setting even better suited for teaching and learning, a setting that will be used -- and judged -- by many generations to come."

The fact that everyone has not universally embraced these efforts should serve as no deterrent, officials say.

Yes, there has been criticism, mostly about parts of the plan near some adjacent neighborhoods. Those concerns come mostly from residents along Mason Farm Road who are worried about the impact of new student family housing and, eventually, a planned major access road that is a key part of the trustee-approved master plan that assumes the University eventually will acquire some of the nearby properties that it does not currently own.

Since the development plan was approved, the University has committed itself to continuing to work with residents to resolve still unanswered questions including details about the design of new family student apartments that will replace the aging Odum Village and ring Baity Hill.

Left unresolved for now, with the town council's approval, is the exact placement and timing of the proposed access road. But the development plan and its addenda spell out plans to preserve a corridor for a possible regional rail or bus system.

University leaders say they have paid careful attention to the concerns of neighbors and will continue to work with them in the future.

Approval of the master plan, originally set for fall of 2000, was delayed until March so that possible alternatives for the access road could be explored.

Trustees held a special meeting in January, with residents present, so they could see firsthand what options were available and what options were not.

In the end, the proposed access road stayed in the plan with the understanding that it would not be built immediately.

But this one controversy, in Moeser's view, has obscured the multiple, mutual benefits that both the University and the town will ultimately derive by executing the development plan, which in a way represents only the opening chapter of a master plan still left to be written over the next half century.

The development plan calls, too, for the renovation of Memorial Hall and the arts corridor that will one day surround it, connecting people to events directly from Franklin Street and a new Ackland Art Museum addition nearby.

Moeser finds it ironic that the complex domino-like plans required to build new and renovate existing student housing on south campus has generated the most friction given the University's "bed for every head" pledge to keep students living on campus.

It is a goal that University officials believe will be good not only for students, but for nearby residents and the Chapel Hill community as a whole.

But in the end, Moeser said, the University is obligated to see past the controversies of the day and tomorrow's headlines and look at the long view of history.

"We want to be judged as we now judge the founders, as people who did all they could to get it right," Moeser said. "We can do no less, and no less should be expected from us."

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