A campus planning committee meeting scheduled to last an hour and a half was adjourned after just seven minutes Tuesday afternoon, something University Planning Associate Christine Thompson said was not unexpected given the number of public hearings and the attention that planning issues have received in the past few months.
The meeting’s focus was the Long Range Campus Development Plan, but because the updates being done to the plan are in their final stages, Thompson said the need for community members to voice opinions or concerns may not seem as pressing to them as it was a few months ago.
The campus development plan is being updated for the first time since 1991, with changes focusing on increasing development capacity while maintaining the beauty and open spaces mandated in the original plan.
The meeting agenda included time for a public hearing, but no members of the public showed up to speak.
“I don’t think it was for lack of interest,” Thompson said after the meeting, referring to the number of chances the public had in previous months to voice concerns.
The remainder of the meeting was devoted to Thompson’s informing the committee about the next steps in the update process, something that took just a few minutes.
“This is the fastest campus planning committee meeting on record,” said Carole Daly, committee chair and senior director of
development opportunities.
Members stayed after the meeting adjourned to discuss various happenings at the University and in the planning department, such as the University’s plans for a basketball arena, and development on Franklin Boulevard near the Williams’ Bakery site and the vacant car lot recently purchased by the University of Oregon Foundation.
Associate professor of architecture Peter Keyes brought a laptop computer with arena designs that students in the architecture department completed for a course that architecture professor emeritus Michael Utsey offered fall term. University graduate Bob Thompson, who is Nike CEO Phil Knight’s primary architect, worked with the students throughout the term and critiqued the finished designs with other
architecture experts.
University Planning Director and Architect Chris Ramey attended the design presentations in December, as did Karl Wagenknecht, a dentist with an office on the same block as the bakery site, and his wife, Jeanne, a University
business professor.
Allan Price, vice president for University Advancement, said in a Feb. 10 Emerald article that the University must purchase a medical building, a video store and a 7-11 store if the arena is to be built on the site (“University finalizes bakery site purchase”). Fairmount Neighborhood Association Co-Chair Jeff Nelson announced at the group’s March 31 meeting that Wagenknecht has expressed to him his unwillingness to relocate his office.
University Housing Director Mike Eyster looked over some of the
designs with Keyes after Tuesday’s meeting and briefly discussed
their possible impact on the
residence halls and surrounding neighborhood.
Thompson said the Long Range Campus Development Plan has not generated the amount of attention from east campus residents as the East Campus development plan has, which she said is to be expected
given the general scope of the
two plans. The East Campus plan is
tailored specifically to development in the east campus area.
