Potential design concepts for the downtown Madison plan could entail extending East Campus Mall from Lake Mendota to Brittingham Park, new pedestrian walkways near Langdon Street and other potential changes to the campus area.

City planners held an informational session for campus at the Memorial Union Tuesday to present the process for the downtown plan, detail some potential concepts and elicit feedback from students and community members.

Extending East Campus Mall to connect the lakes was met with a good amount of approval, according to an illustrative map gauging people’s opinion of the idea.

Another potential concept involves a dual pedestrian path system near Langdon Street, with a path along the lake potentially extending from the union area to James Madison Park.

According to principal city planner Bill Fruhling, a de facto path already exists between Lake and Langdon streets, but the potential idea would be to legitimize this path with proper lighting and landscaping.

According to city planner Rebecca Cnare, the dual path idea was met with much approval from people, especially concerning how it ran to the union.

The height and character of the Mifflin neighborhood has been a controversial point of the downtown plan.

Fruhling said two schools of thought relate to the neighborhood: keeping the existing scale and character of the houses since people have an emotional attachment to the neighborhood, and seeing the area in need of repairs lending itself to a new direction for the area.

One plan has the building heights of houses being maintained at two to three stories, while the competing plan entails a four to six-story building plan.

Fruhling said these are two extremes of the issue and alternative ideas could be pursued.

“The area could be a more of a blend of those forces — a synergy,” Fruhling said.

Fruhling emphasized any plans currently seen are not recommendations, but only illustrative of ideas gathered from meeting with people in the community, businesses and the University of Wisconsin.

He also said the downtown plan will guide changes to the city encompassing a 20 year or so outlook and more input is needed on the plan.

He added nothing is set in stone at this point.

“Please stay involved in this. Come to some of the meetings,” Fruhling said. “The more people we hear from, the more opinions we have, we get a better gauge of (people’s opinion of the plan).”

UW junior Ohan Uyanik attended the meeting and was concerned raising any new buildings to construct new facilities should be replaced by building of excellent architecture.

“If you are going to tear something down, replace it with something good,” Uyanik said.

Fruhling added students and other community members can come to the downtown plan office during the appropriate hours to share ideas on the plan and ask questions.

The city planners are working on drafting a recommendation plan to be presented to the Madison City Council by January 2010.