Plan envisions East Campus arts district, student housing

A long-range plan to change the face of UW–Madison’s East Campus by creating an arts and humanities district while providing new student housing, classrooms and a pedestrian mall was rolled out by campus planners Thursday (Nov. 6).

Plans for the area, at the crucial junction between campus and downtown, would create an arts and humanities district to anchor the lower State Street area, adding needed performance, gallery and classroom space and a complement to the city’s Overture Center at the opposite end of the street.

The master plan envisions a dramatic change to the East Campus area, unifying arts and humanities programs while offering compelling open spaces – including a centerpiece pedestrian corridor stretching from Lake Mendota to just north of Regent Street.

It also calls for expanding and renovating the Elvehjem Museum of Art, providing music performance space and consolidating art facilities now scattered across campus.

In addition to calling for up-to-date arts facilities, the plan lays out a major student housing initiative, including construction of three new residence halls and the eventual demolition of the Ogg Hall towers, which opened in 1965.

It would also bring together 700 beds of student housing, student financial and health services and retail development at the current site of the University Square mall.

“This plan lays out a vision that will invigorate the East Campus area, and provides a spark that will make it a vibrant center for performing, creating, learning and living on campus,” Chancellor John D. Wiley says of the plan, which plots a course for the university during the next 15 years.

Development of the arts district would require the eventual demolition of the George L. Mosse Humanities Building, the A.W. Peterson Office Building, and storefronts in the 700 block of University Avenue.

That would provide room for the museum to expand, and for relocation of the School of Music, now housed in the Humanities Building, to a new home that would include both performance and academic space.

The museum addition would consist of a basement and four stories on the east side of Murray Street, with an above-ground connector linking it to the existing structure.

The School of Music would move into new performance space built east of Murray Street and new academic space for the school would eventually be built on the site of the UW-Extension Building, which would be torn down.

Preliminary estimates show that the Elvehjem addition, the removal of the Peterson Building and construction of the music performance facility would cost $67.9 million, with $58 million funded by gifts and $9.9 million from state funds.

Planners want to get the museum addition put on the 2009-11 state project list and the performance facility on the 2011-13 list.

Another part of the plan calls for the Art Department, now headquartered in the Humanities Building but with facilities at 10 sites scattered across campus, to move to new quarters at the southwest corner of West Johnson Street and North Park Street.

The History Department, which also occupies the Humanities Building, would temporarily move to Brogden Hall, allowing the demolition of the Humanities Building, in two phases.

After the northern half of the Humanities Building is torn down, plans call for a new classroom building to be constructed on the site. Destruction of the remaining half of Humanities will provide the site for a new building to house the History Department and various other humanities centers.

Establishment of the arts and humanities district – bolstered by existing theater and performance space at Vilas Hall – would ease day-to-day concerns of overcrowding and insufficient facilities for galleries, studios and music performance.

The master plan envisions an area drawn together by inviting outdoor spaces, which create a pedestrian-friendly, village-like atmosphere. The plan’s major organizing feature is the pedestrian mall.

The proposed mall would link high-use campus areas such as the Memorial Library and Memorial Union with the arts and humanities district, student housing and the Kohl Center beyond.

Plans call for the corridor to include possible outdoor performance areas and an outdoor sculpture garden near the Elvehjem.

Associate Vice Chancellor Alan Fish said the master plan provides a way for officials to map a cohesive development in the area the coming years. Preliminary cost estimates have been prepared only for projects in the plan’s first phase.

“These projects have not been budgeted, not all have been scheduled, but we want to think about them all at once because all of the pieces are interlocking,” Fish says. “It’s not a spending plan. It’s a set of opportunities we have.”

The master plan also addresses two other major university goals: consolidating student services and providing additional student housing that will enable housing officials to provide more housing for incoming freshmen who choose to live in residence halls for a second year.

Paul Evans, director of University Housing, says that from 600 to 1,000 beds are needed to meet the demand of incoming freshmen, depending on the year.

“We need to make sure we have high-quality housing into the future,” Evans says. “We need to deal with aging buildings, and often simple renovations actually reduce occupancy.”

The proposed University Square development, one of the first steps in the plan, would provide a combination of parking, retail, student services and student housing space.

The master plan calls for two levels of underground parking with 520 parking stalls, two levels of retail space and about 700 beds of student housing.

It also calls for bringing student financial services, such as the bursar, registrar and financial aid office – as well as a new student health center and a student activities center – together as part of the development.

Preliminary estimates indicate the development would cost $150.2 million, with $75.5 million from housing, health, student activities and parking revenue, $33.5 million from the state and $41.2 million from the developer for the retail portion of the project.

University officials will ask that the project be put on the state’s 2005-07 project list, with the housing funds released in that biennium and the state funds in the 2007-09 budget cycle.

The development would feature one of three residence halls planned for the area. The second site is on recreational fields at the southeast corner of Park and Dayton streets and would provide about 600 beds in a six- to eight-story structure.

The open space consumed by that residence hall project would be replaced by recreational fields at the former site of Ogg Hall.

Further south on Park Street, the plan calls for construction of a third new residence hall providing 250 to 400 beds, plus new university office space and parking in a mixed-use development.

The six- to eight-story residence hall would be built on privately-owned land, and the university would lease back the facility beginning in the 2006-07 fiscal year, with an option to buy. The first year’s lease is estimated at $2.53 million.

Removal of the 1,000-bed Ogg Hall and addition of the three new residence halls would leave the university with a net gain of between 550 and 700 beds.

Another feature of the plan includes the removal of a former bank building at the southwest corner of University Avenue and Park Street that now houses the McBurney Disability Resource Center and other offices to make room for an expansion of Grainger Hall. That facility would allow more space for graduate programs in the School of Business.

It also calls for a future addition to the Educational Sciences Building, to be constructed south of the existing tower at Brooks and West Johnson streets.