March
8, 2002
The
Campus Master Plan: What's Your Reaction?
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Map: Courtesy of Carol R Johnson Associates
Landscape
Planning Recommendations
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When President Joanne Creighton convened an ad hoc Campus Master
Planning Committee two years ago this month, she charged the group
with a tall order: determining—with the collaboration of
the MHC community—what changes should be made over the next
fifteen years to MHC's buildings, landscape, infrastructure,
parking, accessibility, and circulation around the campus and
formulating a comprehensive landscape and facilities plan to outline
and implement its recommendations. Creighton also asked the group
of faculty, staff, and students to consider ways of integrating
environmental sustainability into the College's curricular
and cocurricular program and campus landscape and facilities planning.
After nineteen months of deliberation and careful review of reports
and studies produced by consultants, and following numerous public
meetings, presentations, and interviews, the committee has issued
the first public draft of the plan.
Says Mary Jo Maydew, vice-president for finance and administration,
"The committee has carefully reviewed a number of architectural,
engineering, and planning studies and discussed the possible options
extensively to create a plan that can improve an already beautiful
campus. When completed, the plan will be a major accomplishment."
From relocating the admission office to creating an outdoor ice
skating rink, the plan offers much to think about.
Thinking about the plan is exactly what the group wants members
of the MHC community to do. The committee is now seeking responses
to the plan, feedback that it will incorporate into a second draft
that is expected to be completed sometime this spring. A final
plan will be submitted to the Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of
the College at the conclusion of the academic year.
The plan has already been the topic of an Operational Policy
Committee (OPC) meeting March 6 and was presented to the Student
Government Association February 19. "The committee has received
helpful feedback from students, administrators, and faculty who
have attended presentations about the plan," says Stephanie
Hull, assistant to the president and secretary of the College.
"We want to get as many responses as possible before we proceed
with the redraft." The committee hopes to receive staff reactions
to the plan at a Staff Council lunch set for March 25, during
which John Bryant, director of Facilities Management, will make
a presentation. The committee hopes that members of the community
will visit http://www.mtholyoke.edu/committees/cmpc/campmp.shtml,
where the full plan is posted, and will email their thoughts about
the plan to planning@mtholyoke.edu.
The committee can also be contacted by writing to the Office of
the President.
Early on in the planning process, the committee set a series
of goals, agreeing that the plan should "inject an urban
dynamism and vitality into the campus through landscape and architecture";
protect the "tranquility of pastoral areas" and make
those areas "more inviting" when necessary; preserve
the "overall proportions of the campus" while improving
circulation, clarifying the physical layout, and creating opportunities
for social interaction; enhance the College's "natural
and built resources" in ways that are sensitive to the environment;
and forge a twenty-first-century identity for the College as a
"contemporary and forward-looking, as well as historic and
venerable, academic institution." In meeting these goals,
the committee has produced a plan that is divided into five sections:
Landscape, Parking and Circulation, Environmental Stewardship,
Facilities Design and Maintenance, and Next Steps.
The landscape section is informed largely by the landscape master
plan proposed by Carol R. Johnson Associates. With the broad goal
of maintaining and enhancing campus open spaces and vistas and
emphasizing the shade-tree canopy, this section outlines three
subgoals. They are to develop a long-range plan for ensuring the
health of the tree canopy; implement design standards for paving,
outdoor furnishings, lighting, and signage; and emphasize the
appeal of the outdoors on campus with initiatives ranging from
walking paths to an outdoor skating rink. Listed in this section
are projects under way or planned to take place over the next
several years, which include completing a campus tree inventory
and a plan for maintaining the tree canopy; evaluating the aesthetics
of campus plantings; implementing a hierarchy of maintenance levels
for the campus landscape; developing campus interpretive materials
such as tree labels and garden maps; and displaying maps and information
in kiosks around campus.
The Parking and Circulation section focuses on the need for clearly
identified entrances to campus; improved signage and display of
campus maps; a return to the predominance of pedestrian circulation
on campus; and revision of traffic and parking patterns. Proposed
in the plan is making Lower Lake Road and Chapin Road the primary
routes through campus. Most campus roads would become pedestrian
pathways, although they would be available for service, emergency,
and handicapped-access purposes, and efforts would be made to
make the campus more "pedestrian-friendly." The plan
also calls for minimizing parking around central greens and along
the water and expanding peripheral parking lots. Mentioned as
a first step toward implementing these plans is the relocation
of Lower Lake Road from Morgan Street to the Ciruti Center. The
tennis courts adjacent to Pratt Hall have already been removed,
and the site will be relandscaped, as will the lawn area between
Pratt and Ciruti. Future initiatives include repaving and traffic-flow
projects, shifting parking areas, developing walkways and entrances,
and renovating the stairs to the 1904 Garden.
Under discussion in the Environmental Stewardship section is
the College's commitment to an environmentally sustainable
community through stewardship of MHC's land. Initiatives
proposed under the plan include practicing "green building"
design and construction; promoting energy conservation; practicing
environmentally sensitive grounds standards and strengthening
the stewardship of Stony Brook and Upper and Lower Lakes; effectively
managing hazardous-materials use and disposition; continuing to
strengthen recycling; expanding conservation efforts to new areas;
incorporating environmental stewardship and sustainable practices
into all campus planning and operations; continuing to integrate
environmental literacy across the curriculum; developing opportunities
for research and scholarship in the areas of environmental stewardship;
and expanding the use of the campus as a teaching laboratory.
Among the specific projects proposed are managing the forests
on Prospect Hill and evaluating the feasibility of linking the
College to the Amherst bike path system.
In the Facilities Design and Maintenance section, the committee
identifies "pressing needs for changes and/or additions to
our facilities." It is proposed that the College build a
new residence hall consisting of suites or apartments, possibly
at the corner of College and Morgan Streets; relocate the admission
office, possibly to a site on Lower Lake Road across from Pratt
Hall; move all faculty offices onto the east side of College Street;
and renovate Clapp Laboratory. The committee also reported on
concerns and requests that have been shared with its members,
which include expanded space for the Weissman Center for Leadership
that might also include shared space for other interdisciplinary
and cross-disciplinary programs; reuniting the dance department
with the other performing arts on the south end of campus, thus
improving dance performance space and providing additional classroom
and performance space for the theatre department; combining a
relocated admission office with other student-services operations;
and renovating Dwight Hall and Williston Library. Referred to
in detail in this section is a study by Sightlines, Inc., that
identifies $85 million of deferred maintenance, modernization,
and infrastructure that should be completed over the next ten
to fifteen years. A multiyear zone-maintenance plan is being developed
to assure that such work is done cost-effectively.
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