10-06-95 Trustees Adopt Campus Master Plan OHIO STATE ADOPTS NEW MASTER PLAN COLUMBUS -- The Ohio State University Board of Trustees on Friday (10/6) adopted a new master plan to guide development of the university through the first quarter of the 21st century. The plan replaces a 1962 plan that was last amended in 1978. Trustees noted that the plan was necessary to support the academic purposes and priorities of the university for the next 30 to 50 years and enhance the quality of life for students, faculty, staff and visitors. The plan includes a framework to guide campus development with regard to land use, open space, density of development, traffic circulation, and linkages to the surrounding communities. The plan was developed in conjunction with the university's efforts to improve the quality of life in campus area neighborhoods. The goal of the Master Plan is to ensure that future development decisions reflect and contribute to the long- range concept for conserving campus resources and maintaining a unified, efficient, and attractive campus. Trustees directed university officials to proceed with implementing the processes and additional planning activities provided for in the plan. The master planning effort was led and coordinated by the University s Interim Master Planning Advisory Committee. Planning services were provided by Sasaki and Associates, Michael Dennis and Associates and Moody/Nolan Ltd. The plan calls for a campus environment that supports increased interdisciplinary exchanges among people and, at the same time, reinforce disciplinary "hearths." It recommends that to the extent that it is physically and financially feasible, research facilities should be located adjacent to their related academic disciplines. In addition, "the density and location of development will have to be rigorously managed to avoid irretrievable consumption of limited land resources." That will mean integrating future facilities at higher densities within established, developed areas of the campus. Buildings will be designed with greater flexibility to adapt to rapidly evolving technologies and avoid obsolescence. According to the plan, "new construction will serve the needs of high technology and renovated space will be used for less demanding uses." Because of Ohio State's land-grant heritage of public service, the campus should make the university's knowledge "functionally and symbolically accessible to the public." The Master Plan calls for giving greater attention to the needs of non-traditional commuter students and high achieving undergraduate and graduate students, providing for distance learning and public "common areas" and meeting places, and emphasizing safety and security in the planning and design of each capital improvement project. Civic structure recommendations include establishing new open-space quadrangles and extending Seventeenth Avenue as a pedestrian walk way past Ohio Stadium and across the river to the agriculture campus. The Master Plan establishes many policies. Among them are: -- Preparing more specific plans for districts and subdistricts of the campus. -- Establishing a design review board to evaluate proposed projects to determine compliance with the Master Plan, and ensure that the projects meet the highest qualitative standards. -- Avoiding the development of buildings in dispersed arrangements where the buildings have no compositional relationship to each other and gradually replacing or modifying existing suburban buildings that detract from the quality of the surrounding environment. -- Protecting existing open space by designating a "Green Reserve" containing The Chadwick Arboretum, Waterman Farm, the Oval, Mirror Lake Hollow, open space surrounding and south of Ohio Stadium, and other areas. -- Preserving and reinforcing naturalistic landscapes and the system of interconnected quadrangles. -- Improving vehicular access through signs and graphics, gateways and streetscapes, signals, directional changes, and the geometry of intersections. -- Making Woodruff Avenue and Woody Hayes Drive an "academic boulevard" along which future academic and research facilities will be located. -- Creating visually interesting pedestrian and vehicle corridors consisting of tree-lined streets, with buildings that are set back a uniform distance. -- Providing an improved and interconnected system of paths for pedestrians and for bicyclists. -- Erecting strategically located, well-designed parking structures to replace surface parking along the Oval and around the stadium and enhancing the stadium area by replacing the parking lots with grass and constructing buildings on the east side that face toward, rather than away from the stadium. -- Distinguishing campus entries through design and landscaping and connecting the campus and adjacent community by open spaces, sidewalks, bicycle paths, and streets. -- Designing buildings and landscape together so that each refers to and emphasizes the importance of the other. The plan also contains specific recommendations to reinforce the relationship of the university to the neighborhoods east of High Street, and to the NECKO/Dennison Place, Neil Avenue North, Kinnear Road neighborhoods. According to Jill Morelli, assistant vice president and university architect, efforts are under way to implement the many processes outlined in the Master Plan and integrate them with the existing decision making process at Ohio State. District plans will be presented periodically to the Board of Trustees for approval. The plan for the North Academic Core area will likely be presented in November. The text of the plan is available on the University Architect home page on the World Wide Web. The location is http://www.apo.ohio-state.edu/. Work is being done to place the master-plan maps on the web as well. # Contact: Jill Morelli, assistant vice president and university architect, (614) 292-4458. [Submitted by: Von Reid-Vargas (ereid@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu) Fri, 6 Oct 1995 16:22:51 -0400] All documents are the responsibility of their originator.