This year’s Campus Plan is nearly double the size of the 2001 plan, which included designs for the Katzen Arts Center and the new School of International Service building.
The 2011 plan proposes 750,000 square feet of new buildings, additions and renovations. The 2001 plan called for 400,000 square feet of development, only 94,700 of which has been built.
The remaining 306,000 square feet were not built due to a lack of funding, according to Jorge Abud, AU’s assistant vice president of Facilities Development and Real Estate. Many of the projects were supposed to be paid through by fundraising, but the money was never raised and AU did not borrow the money needed.
The three main areas of concern for local residents are traffic, what people in University buildings might be able to see in nearby homes and what residents of those homes might see on campus, according to Abud, who has worked on both plans.
“It’s natural for people anticipating change near their homes to be concerned and fearful,“ Abud said. “The reaction we’ve gotten from Westover Place residents is that they’re concerned about the large number of students who would be living [on the East Campus] and problems that might create in terms of noise or views of the buildings we are proposing closest to the homes.”
Though Abud said overall opposition to what the Campus Plan has proposed is not much different from that of 2001, the University now involves many more community members in the planning process.
Neighborhood outreach is conducted through mailings and posting information online.
“Our experience in the past is that the community kind of self-selected who would attend the meetings, and what we found toward the end of each of our processes is that new people came in who hadn’t been involved and we had to deal with that,“ Abud said. “At the start of this process, we wanted to make sure we cast the net very wide and included as many people as possible.”
The amount of neighbors present at this year’s meetings is more than double the amount present at the 2001 meetings, according to David Taylor, AU’s chief of staff.
Last time, more association leaders represented residents, he said. This year, more neighbors have come themselves.
Campus officials used a professional mediator to oversee talks between AU and the community, similar to 2001, Abud said.
“It helps to have someone who has neither our interests nor the community’s interests in mind, but is just trying to help people be open-minded about bringing different ideas together,” he said.
The Katzen building is one story shorter than was originally proposed because of community input during the process.
The design of the back of the building was also modified to include a minimum number of windows and no lighting, and mechanical equipment was strategically placed to limit the amount of noise that could be heard from nearby houses.
“I think that was, for whatever reason, my recall is that that was a significant gesture the University made to the community. It enabled us to really get the momentum going behind it,” Taylor said.
The Zoning Commission approved the 2001 plan overall with a number of conditions on issues such as hours of operation and lighting, many of them having to do with Katzen, Abud said. Some structures included in the 2001 Campus Plan were never completed, including:
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