Looking Ahead: The Future of Our Campus

Five years ago, the administration of Columbus State decided to take a long, hard look at the campus. The University was growing, RiverPark had grown into a unique creative hub and then-President Timothy Mescon was looking towards the future. A team of urban planners from Sasaki, a world-renowned landscape design firm, arrived in Columbus. They set out to achieve three goals: to evaluate the current spaces on Main and Riverpark campuses (and to plan for their ongoing maintenance), to create a “long-range vision” for the future of both campuses, and to better facilitate connections between them.

They began looking at everything. How many buildings did we have at CSU? How old were they? How interesting were they? How many parking spaces did we have? How many parking spaces did we need? What about trees, athletic fields, green space and study areas? What do we want from our campus, this place where we spend so much of our time?

An online campus survey called “MyCSU” was released. On an interactive map, students, faculty and staff could tag locations that they liked or disliked, and provide comments and suggestions for making them better. Using these answers, along with focus groups and discussions with students, faculty and administrators, the plan was finalized in February of 2012.

Five years later, it’s time for us to evaluate that plan. What has been done and what has yet to be done? Five years later, what do we want from our campus, and what can we expect it to look like as CSU evolves?

What has been done?

Here is a small list of what the plan calls for in the short term: the expansion of the Davidson Student Center and the dining hall area, the renovations of Howard and Arnold Halls, the construction of more residential dorms, an additional wing to Lenoir Hall, an expansion of the Schwob Memorial Library, and the demolition of Woodall Hall to make room for an open quad area.

By all accounts, we’ve made great progress. Many of those projects have already been completed. The expansion of the Davidson and the renovation of Howard Hall were completed in Fall 2015. The Clearview Hall dormitory and a shiny new Howard Hall went up a year later in Fall 2016, and the brand new College of Education and Health Professions is scheduled to open this spring on Broadway in the old Ledger-Enquirer headquarters.

Feedback on the renovations has been supportive. “Arnold is a vast improvement for the English department and the psychology department from where they were,” said Pat McHenry, Ph.D, Interim Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education. “There’s still some kinks being worked out in that building, but I think everyone agrees that it’s a really beautiful space.”

Student Government Association President Chelsey Rogers agrees. “…the more student-friendly classroom buildings and the new dorms are creating a campus that is more involved an engaged. I am a political science major so the majority of my classes take place in Howard and I absolutely love the building!” said Rogers.

Increasing residential space (building dorms) is a vital part of the plan. The plan suggested building dorms along where the current intramural field is, but Clearview wound up being the concept that worked best. The idea is that when students live on campus, they are more likely to be actively involved in their University experience.

“We’ve always recognized that if we had more students living on campus, then we could have more of a lively campus community that’s vibrant all the time,” said McHenry. “That’s a good thing—it engages students; it gives them a better experience, [and] it makes the campus more attractive to potential faculty and staff. So Clearview, especially, helps serve that purpose.”

Brett Evans, Senior Director of Development and the CSU Fund, says that student engagement over the last five years is up, and that he hopes it will continue to grow over the next few years. “We also know that the more time a student spends on campus, the more likely they are to achieve higher grades and develop deeper relationships with their peers. This makes for a more vibrant campus and ultimately leads to more engagement with CSU after graduation.”

What’s Next?

Next on the pipeline is a new addition to Lenoir Hall. Eric Pittman, Director of Campus Planning and Development, says that that project is well underway. “Lenoir Hall is in design. Construction is tentatively scheduled to start in February, [so it’s] approximately an 18-month project from December or January.” The new addition will add specialized classrooms and lab spaces and will allow science faculty to begin moving to Jordan Hall, which will be vacant when the education department moves downtown. “We have science faculty spread across the campus and we want to put them in a central location. It’s to make their world a little better,” says Pittman. “What that creates back there in that area is a kind of ‘science island.’”

The completion of the new nursing and education building will also allow the Honors College and the Faculty Center to move into Illges Hall. “It gives [the Honors College] a much larger space for gathering,” said Pittman. “Dean Ticknor tries to get them together pretty regularly, so that will allow her a large gathering venue, and it’s right there. Everything will stay together, everyone can come visit, and it’s a pretty good situation all together.” The Faculty Center, which will also be in the building, is a space where instructors can discuss and test teaching methods.

Once those transitions are completed, the next item on the list is the expansion of the Schwob Memorial Library. It will add a new glass façade that will make the library seem less “inward-looking,” and will create a more inviting study and eating space.

The demolition of Woodall Hall will be bundled in with the library expansion project. Woodall Hall used to house the English department, but now only serves as a temporary space for the ACT tutoring center. It will be demolished in order to create a true quad between the clock tower and the library. Plans were floated to temporarily move the UITS help desk into Woodall before its demolition, but they were abandoned. Eventually the help desk and the tutoring center are expected to be housed in the newly-expanded library.

Mr. Pittman said that the completion of that project is some time away. “On the library, right now the Board of Regents have recommended funding for design, and that’s the recommendation that will go forward to the legislature this year. That funding will cover the design cost, and the design timeline will take approximately a year.” After the design is complete, the school can request funding for construction. The project is expected to be completed in a minimum of three years.

The Future

The master plan outlines some long-term projects as well. After the library addition is constructed, the plan proposes a widening of the sidewalk to create a “pedestrian spine” that establishes the central thoroughfare of campus, with a lush canopy of trees providing shade over the path as it passes by the clock tower and through Howard Hall. This would have to be completed after the other developments, as there would be too much heavy equipment moving throughout the area if it were done beforehand.

In the even longer term, and in what is sure to be its most controversial proposal, the plan calls for the elimination of all parking spaces in the large surface lot by plant operations, and the construction of a second parking garage at the current site of Lot 3, next to the tennis courts. Those parking spaces would be turned into recreation and sports fields, creating a higher “acropolis” of academic buildings and a lower “recreation district” of fields, parks and green space. Plant Ops would move to another location, possibly across the street from Courtyard on University Avenue.

Eric Pittman says that this plan is not only feasible, but responsible. “One of the long range transitions is to take up less of a hard-surface footprint. So it’s more ecofriendly if we convert all [that] to green space, and just go to vertical parking. It creates a more economically feasible approach, a more ecofriendly approach, and I think in the long run it’s a better situation for students.”

It would be a long way off. In order for such a large change to be thinkable, the University’s student population would need to grow, and its percentage of residential students would need to make up a larger share of that population.

SGA President Chelsey Rogers said that she “truly believes [that] the key to university growth on the large scale, and individual student experience on the small scale, is involvement and engagement.” That’s what it’s all about, really. What can we do to create spaces that make engaging with each other easier? The Master Plan attempts to answer that question, but the community is who will decide whether or not a piece of paper is correct. As the timeline moves forward, we will see if its noble goals are realized.