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.