gazette@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Chris Redmond) (01/24/91)
Text from today's Gazette: An estimated 1,000 people turned out Sunday to get a look at what UW's campus might look like over the next century or so. Organizers were "very pleased" at the turnout for a campus planning open house, said Dianne Scheifele of the university secretariat, who made many of the arrangements for the Federation Hall event. "This was a really good balance of people," she added, noting that attendance was brisk not only from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., when UW faculty, students and staff were invited, but through the afternoon hours too, when the off-campus community was also welcome. The point of the open house was an airing of what's been tentatively suggested for the campus by the consulting firm of Berridge Lewinberg Greenberg Ltd., hired by UW in a $200,000 planning project. Suggestions from the open house, as well as ideas collected in many meetings BLG is holding with UW officials and others on campus, will be incorporated into the firm's eventual proposals, which have already been dubbed "the green plan" because of their emphasis on the environment. BLG is calling for a large environmental "preserve" through the middle of UW's undeveloped north campus. That preserve, straddling Laurel Creek, would link the conservation area to the north of the campus with Waterloo Park to the south. And the firm's ideas for north campus development -- a mixture of research, commercial and housing uses -- include plenty of trees and other natural landscaping, including waterways. (One major swath of what's now farmland would be replanted with native trees, according to the maps and plans BLG was showing off on Sunday.) One of the firm's partners, Joe Berridge, was telling visitors to the open house that it will take several decades to develop the north campus to its maximum, and that the development should happen in "quadrants", rather than scattered across the roughly one square mile of empty land. Other points in what BLG is tentatively setting out: * "Infill" development on the south campus, so that academic buildings won't ever be spread further apart than the extremes that exist now. * Conversion of some parking lots, along University Avenue and Columbia Street, to building sites, with uses that could include housing and commercial activity. * Linking the campus to the surrounding city with several new streets, especially from the Phillip Street direction. * Greater reliance on public transit (and bicycles and walking) to get people to campus, in keeping with a reduction in the amount of parking space available. * Crossing the Westmount Road extension off the list of things to be done some day, and replacing it with a network of smaller streets crisscrossing what's now the north campus. * A definite decision that UW will lease and otherwise manage its own land rather than selling any of it. * Small-scale moves to link buildings on the south campus (with walkways, arcades and tunnels) to make it more comfortable during harsh weather. Afterthought, not in today's Gazette: The authorities are hoping to put copies of the BLG display panels on view somewhere on campus within the next few days. Details will be posted when available.