Meeting for the first time in almost a year, the Boston University Community Task Force packed a Bay State Road room last night for the preliminary unveiling of BU’s third institutional master plan, which Senior Vice President Richard Towle called the university’s “wish list” for the next 10 years.
“Our idea tonight is just to get the general information out to you,” Towle told the 30 task force members, BU representatives and city officials assembled on the second floor of 121 Bay State Rd.
According to university officials, at the top of BU’s wish list are a brand new Life Science and Engineering Building on Cummington Street and graduate apartments on Commonwealth Avenue.
Consultants presented task force members with detailed information about both projects last night, in hopes that the task force will approve them simultaneously with the rest of the master plan, allowing construction to begin as early as May, said Chief Consultant Bob Kenney.
Laden with scale color renderings and elevations of the proposed science building, Jamie Fay, president of the environmental planning and consulting firm Four Point Associates, spoke about the benefits of the proposed new 10-story building.
According to Fay, the roughly 180-foot structure will provide space for 35 new faculty members and be a boon for BU’s ballooning number of life science and engineering grants, which Towle said has reached $50 million.
“This is basically a research building for biology and chemistry,” Fay said of the 190,000 square foot building to be located at 20-28 Cummington St., on top the old Nickelodeon Theater.
“This stretch between the turnpike and Cummington Street is really the core of the university’s science and engineering,” he said. “I think it will improve Cummington Street dramatically; it will bring a lot more life to that street.”
The task force then turned its attention to 580 Commonwealth Ave., which the university hopes will soon be home to 207 new graduate student apartments. According to Mark Clayton, a consultant from Trammell Crow Company, the current vacant building on the lot is in “structural disrepair.”
Because of their proximity to BU’s science buildings — including the proposed Life Science and Engineering building — the studio and one-bedroom apartments would target science graduate students, Clayton said.
“The majority of [graduate students] do not own vehicles and the majority of the science buildings are in walking distance of 580,” he said.
Clayton told the task force that the construction would take about 14 months and could be completed as soon as August 2004.
“The graduate housing will really fill a new niche for Boston University,” Towle said. “We hope to provide housing for the core of our graduate students.”
In addition to the proposed science center and apartments, Kenney reviewed the university’s other main goals for the nascent master plan, including a new 14-story School of Law on the lot where BU Academy now sits and an expansion for Mugar Memorial Library, which he called “chock-a-block.”
“We need more space,” he said.
The plan, which has not yet been written, is a compilation of the university’s “ideas and goals” for developing its properties over the next decade, Towle said. The task force’s job is to represent the community’s concerns about BU’s expansion.
According to John O’Brien, the Boston Redevelopment Authority project manager for the master plan, Article 80 of the Boston Zoning Code mandates organizations like BU have an institutional master plan on file with the BRA. Article 80 went into effect in 1996, but O’Brien said BU has been filing Master Plans with the city since 1986. BU was the first university to do so, Towle said.
“In ’96 we decided we need to review some of these projects,” O’Brien said. “They have impacts on the community.”
Last night’s meeting was the first stage of a months-long process of give-and-take between the university and the 16 community groups on the task force. It will eventually result in the university’s third plan, which will cover BU through 2012. The last plan, a five-year plan drafted in 1997, expires this fall.
Kenney said a draft of the plan could be submitted to the task force by the end of the year and said the task force could vote on it by late January or early February. He attributed his optimistic timeline to the fact that many of the proposed projects for the new plan were already approved by task force in the last plan.
“The plan that we’ll be doing now will have a lot of similarities to [the 1997] plan,” he said.
Task Force Chairwoman Pam Beale, who represents the Kenmore Association and who has been on the committee since the first plan, shared Kenney’s optimism.
“So much of [the new plan] is repetition,” she said. “In ’86 it was a real learning curve; we were all learning as we were going.”
New task force member Beth Walsh, of the Kenmore Community Economic Development Corporation, said she thinks the task force is a great way to incorporate community sentiment in BU’s plans.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” she said. “Every proposed project that BU has come up with to do, they’ve committed to doing the community outreach — they’re a wonderful neighbor.”
College of Arts and Science sophomore Jessica Crooker, who was asked by the Dean of Students’ Office to be the student representative to the task force, said she thinks BU’s relationship with the community is vital.
“I think it’s really important to connect BU with the community,” she said.
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