Last Night's meeting on Campustown

Last night in the Gallery Room of the MU the university and the city hosted a presentation on the results of the latest survey conducted by an architectural firm, contracted by ISU. The event was heavily promoted on campus (including a news story at http://www.iastate.edu/Inside/2009/0313/campustown.shtml), but attendance from students was a little low. There were leaders from GSB and the CSA, and it was clear that prior to this presentation there had not been much communication between students and the officials involved in the creation of this design concept. The CSA representative invited everyone present at that meeting to their next joint meeting with the CAA, which is Wednesday, April 1 a 4PM at the Iowa House.

What was presented was essentially a proposal for a massive redevelopment of a single block of Campustown, specifically the one bounded by Lincoln Way, Chamberlain, Welch and Hayward. Many buildings were completely absent in the final vision to make way for a park and water feature extending diagonally from the corner of Lincoln Way and Welch (where Copyworks currently is) to the northwest corner of the new apartment building at the corner of Chamberlain and Hayward (the only structure proposed to be completely untouched). This park would connect to the Arboretum and would include a bike trail, and would provide a great deal of aesthetic value, especially if you were traveling westbound on Lincoln Way. A ballpark cost estimate was $50 million. An entirely new building devoted to office space, whose primary tenant was expected to be the university, was at the core in a space currently occupied by a city parking lot.

I'd really like to see some discussion on this. A lot of critical opinions were expressed by a variety of stakeholders, many of whom have ties to SCAN, which I'd like to share:

1. This plan was based on the assumption of the continuation of current policy, especially with regard to parking regulation. Some fairly radical potential changes restricting the ability of Campustown residents to have cars (thus freeing up current spaces to restaurant and other business patrons) were proposed by Fern Kupfer, SCAN's president, which got no reaction from the presenters, other than that they had not considered that possibility.
2. This plan views historic preservation as an afterthought, rather than a core source of redevelopment and revitalization.
3. On a related note, it calls for a number of buildings to be razed. I personally see neither tenants nor owners "buying in", which was the only proposal on the table - eminent domain seems the only likely ultimate course of action for many of these properties.
4. It creates what was described as a "wonderful island" in the middle of something that otherwise had no vision proposed whatsoever. $50 million spread out over the four blocks including it as well as to the south, east(where the fire station will be vacating sometime in 5-10 years), and southeast (where there's already the Campustown Court project), if not even more of Campustown, seems like a more effective idea. Response to this criticism, which was voiced more than once during the Q&A session, was that they didn't want so big a scope that nothing would ever happen.
5. $50 million whatsoever in the current economic climate, even with the reliance that university and city officials proposed on private developers, seems unrealistic. Everyone presenting was clear that they did not want to see construction happen for just a single building from this plan, and then nothing else.
6. This is not the first such proposal for massive redevelopment of Campustown. The past 30 years has seen almost annual efforts get to exactly this stage, and no further.
7. Very little was said to really address parking. Honestly, I got the impression that step 1 of this plan was to assume there was more parking elsewhere (specifically what is now University Lot 60, which would become a structure for public use) but no specific large vision. There was some talk that the buildings along Chamberlain, being at a 15 ft higher elevation, would offer the opportunity for below-grade parking, but that brings us back to points 2 and 3. And, as in point 1, parking tends to wind up occupied by residents of the apartments and their guests, rather than patrons of businesses.

New mailing list

You may have noticed on the right a new "widget" (it's also on our static page at www.scanames.org) to sign up for our email list. This is one of the advantages of using Google Groups to manage our email list. The biggest problem with the way we had been doing it is that email servers tend to assume you're spamming when you send to more than 100 recipients. As I'm no longer with the university, their listserv application is no longer available to me - and scanames@iastate.edu doesn't establish our nature as an independent neighborhood association very well.

Another advantage is that once you've joined, you can use the web interface in Google Groups to view an archive our our messages. If you aren't comfortable with the web interface, just plugging in your email (and answering my question about your interest in SCAN, designed to protect our group from random strangers) will have it working just like things were before -- emails from the group show up in the usual fashion.

I sent everyone on the old list one last email to let them know about the switch, and the response has been generally positive, although only about a third of the emails have shown up as subscribed. A few past SCAN members took advantage of the switch to let me know that they'd moved and were no longer interested in receiving emails, and there were also a number that had been "bouncing" already. Just to be clear, you are not automatically on the group just because you have received an invitation - you have to click the link in the email to be added. A message went out today about Stash the Trash this weekend, so if you didn't receive that you should either go back to the invite and make sure you accepted, or else just use the widget on the right. Relevant Google policies can be found at http://groups-beta.google.com/googlegroups/terms_of_service.html, http://groups-beta.google.com/googlegroups/privacy.html, and http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacypolicy.html.

EWWD Hiatus

Should probably have announced this back in November when I made the decision, but I went back over my old posts and saw that really the only interest was being generated by SCAN-business related ones. While entertainment within walking distance is one of the important part of why we live in this neighborhood, I hate to put so much investment in something that has so little return. That said I will of course be continuing with the business related posts -- there just hasn't been any during these cold dark winter months. There will be a great deal in the next week thanks to VEISHEA, the Campustown Students Association, historic preservation, and an art-related announcement. All of this will also be covered in the newsletter, which will be arriving at paid members' mailboxes in the coming week.

On a related topic, the loss of the Varsity is a big blow to our neighborhood and the potential for independent movies coming to Ames. I hope something as worthwhile as the software company that went in to the Ames Theater location will find a home in the Varsity location - or that it might continue as an independent theater.