University officials admit it: The University is landlocked but land hungry. Like so many other campuses across the country, the room for expansion is limited, but the need to do so continues to increase.
The University’s recent purchase of the Williams’ Bakery site near Franklin Boulevard and the University of Oregon Foundation’s current
effort to acquire the vacant car lot just blocks away from the site are
attempts to build a land bank for the University’s future.
“You can’t tell what you’re going to need 25 years from now,” University Planning Director and Architect Chris Ramey said. “If you leave your successors with more choices, more land, at least they’re better off than if they need more land.”
Land acquisition and development have occurred since the University opened in 1876, resulting in the formation of what University officials and neighborhood representatives say is a love-hate relationship between the institution and the neighborhood — a relationship that has gone though rocky times but thrives on positive conversations and open dialogues.
“People are not comfortable with change,” Ramey said. “That’s why our profession exists — we’re here to manage change.”
Ramey and the rest of the Campus Planning Committee, established in 1969, are currently in the process of updating the Long Range Campus Development Plan for the first time since 1991. That plan, along with the recently updated East Campus development plan, are the University’s answers to questions that have emerged over the years concerning the nature of expansion and its effects on the surrounding neighborhoods.
The Long Range Campus Development Plan focuses on controlling the University’s development so that it follows a clear and organized implementation process, whereas the East Campus plan aims to create a buffer zone of low-density single family housing between University-owned land and the
surrounding neighborhood while allowing for high-density development on the property closest to the University.
Working relationships
Ellis Lawrence, an architect who designed all campus buildings constructed in the 1920s, developed the first campus plan in 1914. In 1973, The Oregon Experiment was introduced, initiating the University development concept of continual planning rather than site-set planning.
It was not until the 1960s, when the University began purchasing houses in the neighborhood east of campus, that neighborhood relations began to take center stage.
University Vice President for Administration Dan Williams said University-neighborhood relations are similar now to how they’ve always been in that “you’re balancing off between wanting to be a good neighbor with being sure that we protect the long-term interests of the University.”
Williams said the process of working with the East Campus neighborhood is one that must center around openness and honesty while still maintaining all-around authority over the land the University rightfully owns.
Williams said most East Campus residents have not been in the neighborhood longer than the University, and although it is still crucial for them to openly express their concerns, they should recognize the inevitability of University expansion.
“Anybody that moved into the neighborhood with the idea that there
wouldn’t be some change is, I think, a little naï