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Officials detail campus master plan
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The director of planning and landscape architecture for the campus master plan, Gary Brown, presented specifics about the University of Wisconsin’s plans for improvement in the central part of campus Tuesday night at Memorial Union.
Brown backed his belief that University Housing needs more room.
“We need at least 700 to 800 more beds on campus for incoming freshmen,” said Brown. “We want to be able to have enough space for students who want to stay on campus. Right now, we don’t have that.”
Brown cited a waiting list, typically of 800 names, of incoming freshmen who are eligible for University Housing but do not end up living on campus because there is not enough space. Studies show that first-year students living on campus get better grades and are more involved at the university than first-year students living elsewhere.
To solve this problem, the campus master plan aims to change some aspects of the Lakeshore residence halls. The plan also considers adding a residence hall near the end of Tripp Circle.
According to Brown, current campus transportation is less than ideal. He focused first on a general plan to make public transportation into and around campus quicker and easier to use. A rail or trolley system will be on the way soon, Brown said.
Brown then addressed specific goals for transportation, including making a 10-minute bus ride across campus realistic for students and faculty. Another goal is to make life easier for pedestrians, he added.
“We are trying to cut down on the number of pedestrian-vehicle conflicts on campus,” Brown said.
He highlighted a plan to turn Linden Drive into a strictly pedestrian walkway. Students may see the first stages of this plan in the fall. The campus master plan, which calls for additions of bike lanes to Observatory Drive over the summer, may experiment with blocking vehicles on Linden between Henry Mall and Babcock Drive.
Brown also highlighted the need to improve the aesthetics of the campus, addressing inconsistent architecture.
“We know we can’t have the same architecture across the campus,” Brown said. “We’re way beyond that now.”
To combat this problem, the campus master plan would instruct architects of new and remodeled buildings to keep plans consistent with the other buildings in the area. Brown said he is enthusiastic about this sectional architecture approach to improve aesthetics.
A few specific buildings need improvements, Brown added, including Van Hise. The plan will most likely call for the removal of Van Hise’s southern leg.
Brown also addressed a plan to clean up Union South. This is necessary because Union South, according to Brown, “is still that concrete bunker from the ’60s and ’70s.” Brown added he hopes the campus master plan will rework or rebuild Union South to give it a new image.
The next town-hall meeting is 7 p.m. tonight at the UW Health and Sciences Learning Center, 750 Highland Ave., room 1306.
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Great, raise tuition some more with this useless “upgrading”. Do we really need more beds, or is there already enough space if they just cut back the number of non-freshmen living in the dorms? I think this trolley/tram business is a total waste of time too. Totally unnecessary.
I wouldn’t call it useless upgrades. UW has to do this kind of work to continue to attract the best professors and students in the country.
Also keep in mind that people like Wiley work hard to get as much private funding as possible for these types of projects to keep the costs down for taxpayers and students. Of course the same people complaining about tutition will also complain about private funds buying their way into the school. Well you can’t have it both ways.
I don’t know what this mention of a tram/trolley thing is, I hadn’t heard of that before. I say make it a mechanical and civil engineering research project and get some corp to sponsor it (like they sponsor the Future Truck)
And lastly, your tuition is way too low anyway, so quit your bitching.
“(like they sponsor the Future Truck)”
You’d have corps like GE and Ford tripping over each other to sponsor something like that, like a hybrid or hydrogen trolley, with a billboard on the side.
Oh course the hippies/communists will bitch.