Seattle campus 10-year plan nearly complete

Document has familiar look and feel

By Nancy Wick
>University Week

The people have spoken and the University has listened. The result is the final Campus Master Plan, the document that is anticipated to guide the UW's physical expansion over the next 10 years. The plan, a sequel to the draft version completed a year ago, was officially released last month. And just as we did last year, University Week is offering a supplement that summarizes the major points in the plan.

Anyone who looked at the draft master plan will find the final version a familiar document. There have been few changes, and most of those that have been made were made in response to community comments.

"After we released the draft plan, we held two hearings on the environmental impact statement and two public meetings on the plan itself," said Assistant Vice President for Regional Affairs Theresa Doherty. "We also brought the plan to the City University Community Affairs Committee (CUCAC) for their review and to a number of community groups. More than 440 copies were mailed out to people who requested them."

The master plan office received 60 comment letters in response to the draft not a large number when one considers that a single project, such as the new law school building, has generated more than that. Master plan staff then read each letter and discussed ways the plan needed to change to address the concerns raised. Contained in the letters were 740 comments that the master plan staff responded to in the Final Environmental Impact Statement.

One thing that has not changed, however, is the basic structure of the plan and its major objectives. The plan is not a blueprint listing specific buildings to be built and where they will be built. Rather, it identifies specific sites on which the University may build in the future and gives the likely use of each site in general terms. For example, a site may be lab eled for "academic" use, but no department is specified. Doherty says the plan pinpoints sites totaling about 8 million gross square feet, but the master plan proposal is for approval to build only 3 million gross square feet during the life of the plan.

The point of this methodology is, of course, flexibility. "Whether we build and what we build depends upon funding and our needs at the time," Doherty said. "By simply identifying sites that are open for development, we can choose the right one for the circumstances we find ourselves in."

The University expects physical expansion over the next 10 years because it expects to have more faculty, staff and students on campus between 8,000 and 9,000 more. But, as Doherty says, "The whole theme of the master plan is preservation of open space and ensuring access to and within the campus by all modes of transportation. We want development that fits into those two things."

Here then are the major elements of the master plan, by area:

Central Campus

The central campus is bounded by Northeast 45th Street on the north, 15th Avenue Northeast on the west, Northeast Pacific Street on the south and Montlake Boulevard on the east.

Although there are 26 potential building sites in the central campus, two were approved in the General Physical Development Plan (GPDP) of 1991, and most of the others are replacing inadequate buildings or covering existing surface parking lots. The major objectives in this area are preserving the historic core and the surrounding central perimeter, including open spaces like Rainier Vista and the Quad.

The biggest change likely to come to central campus is the "opening" of the area to 15th Avenue Northeast. As new buildings are built or existing ones expanded along that street, they will be designed to have entrances on 15th. The wall that currently runs along much of the street will come down bit by bit, because funds for landscaping generally come with funds for buildings. This change, Doherty says, is in direct response to neighborhood concerns that the wall made the University seem unwelcoming.

No new sites have been added to the central campus since the draft plan.

West Campus

The west campus is bounded by 15th Avenue Northeast on the east, the University Bridge and Roosevelt Way on the west, Northeast 41st Street on the north and Northeast Pacific Street on the south.

West campus is the area that is likely to see the most growth during the 10-year period, Doherty says. There are 16 sites, five of which face Campus Parkway. Three of those, which surround Condon Hall, abut a residential neighborhood, and that brought up a concern raised since the draft plan went out.

"People were worried that we would construct those buildings with their backs to the neighborhood and that garbage cans and such would be next to private residences," Doherty said. "We added language to the final plan assuring that we would be sensitive to that concern in designing any building on those sites."

The major objection to plans for west campus, however, concerned the proposal to realign Campus Parkway. The draft master plan contained a bold idea to consolidate both lanes of the street on the south portion of the current street and to use the north portion as open space. To accomplish this, a street vacation petition necessary when developments will take part of the city's right of way was to be filed at the same time as the master plan was approved.

But when the draft plan went out, there was a lot of disagreement over the plans for Campus Parkway. "We came up with a bunch of ideas but none of those was overwhelmingly supported," Doherty said. "So we decided not to request the street vacation simultaneously with the master plan. In the master plan we have quite a large chapter devoted to potential street vacations including Campus Parkway that we may propose during the life of this plan, and the process we will undertake if we move forward with such requests. But we're not requesting approval for those right now."

In other words, the idea to realign Campus Parkway has not been discarded, but if the University decides to move forward with this idea in the future, it will have to go through the street vacation petition process at that time. Since the master plan does not depend on any of the street vacation alternatives, the University does not have to request approval of the street vacation petitions in conjunction with the approval of the master plan.

South Campus

South campus is bounded by Portage Bay on the south, Northeast Pacific Street on the north, Montlake Boulevard on the east and the edge of the planned Portage Bay Vista to the West.

There is one additional development site on south campus that didn't appear in the draft plan. It is on the southwest corner of 15th Avenue Northeast and Northeast Pacific Street a small triangular piece of land where a Sound Transit station was planned. Although Sound Transit may still use this site, Doherty says the uncertainty surrounding light rail lately led the University to add the site to the master plan.

"This just says that if Sound Transit doesn't come to the area, we can go forward to develop the site without having to seek an amendment to the plan," she explained.

There are eight sites on South Campus that carry over from the draft plan, including four that were already approved as part of the GPDP. One potential site, a building to be built on a "lid" over Northeast Pacific Street, met the same kind of objections as the realignment of Campus Parkway, and like the Campus Parkway project, requires the approval of a street vacation petition. The University therefore follows a similar approach here, including the Pacific Lid in the master plan for purposes of disclosure but with no immediate plans to seek the street vacation needed.

Southwest Campus

Southwest campus is bounded by Northeast Pacific Street on the north, Portage Bay on the south and west and the planned Portage Bay Vista on the east.

Southwest campus has its own plan, adopted in 1994 as a supplement to the GPDP. Elements of the plan have already been implemented, and it provides the basis for the Southwest Campus section of the master plan. There are three sites included here, but the emphasis will be on open space rather than buildings.

"What came out loud and clear in all our public outreach was that the community wants more access to the waterfront," Doherty said. "So one of the things included in the plan is the enhancement of a pedestrian path along the water from University Bridge to Montlake Bridge."

There are no changes from the draft plan on southwest campus.

East Campus

East campus is bounded by Montlake Boulevard on the west, the Lake Washington Ship Canal on the south, 45th Street on the north and Union Bay on the east.

There are 14 sites on east campus, including three that are carryovers from the GPDP. Two have been added since the draft plan came out the Tubby Graves building plus tennis courts and the pool plus the Tubby Graves Annex. According to Doherty, comments on the draft plan led the master plan staff to review the east campus sites for a possible expansion of the current swimming pool. No sites in the draft plan were able to accommodate that potential need, so two new sites were added.

The project on east campus that drew the most public attention, however, was the proposed expansion of the golf driving range. The plan is to add a second deck to the range so that more golfers can use it at the same time, but this means higher safety netting around the range, possibly obstructing views.

"Since the draft plan's release, trajectory studies have been done and we've determined that the netting doesn't have to be as high all around the range as we originally thought," Doherty said. "Also, the revised proposal includes a new fencing system that will allow both fewer poles to support the netting and poles that are smaller in diameter."

Coordination with Other Plans

The neighborhood in which the University is located has been designated by the city as the University Community Urban Center (UCUC), one of the neighborhoods that since 1995 have been engaged in efforts to plan for their future growth. Faculty, staff and students at the UW were involved in the creation of the UCUC plan, which like the UW master plan, articulates goals and strategies for the area's growth.

"One of the comments the city made on the draft master plan was that we weren't helping them implement the UCUC plan," Doherty said. "We had included a chapter in the draft about the UCUC plan but it was only four pages long and so didn't include much detail."

So the master plan staff went back to the UCUC plan and found about 50 action items with some relationship to the University. They then added information to the master plan chapter detailing what the University was doing to address these concerns. The current, 14-page chapter spells out the similarities between the master plan and the UCUC plan.

"I think it shows that the University is committed to working with the community to make their plan a reality," Doherty said.

Although the current master plan document is labeled "final," this isn't the end of the story. The document must be approved by both the Board of Regents and the Seattle City Council before it becomes truly final (see What's next on Page 2). And as before, citizens will have plenty of time to comment on it. The master plan is available on the Web at www.washington.edu/community/cmp/cmp.html.

For a paper copy contact the master plan office at (206) 221-4183.