Working Group, March 17, 2011
Campus Master Plan Working Group Minutes
3/17/11, Highsmith University Union Room 224, 9:00-10:30 am
In attendance:
Rob Nelson, consultant and Working Group chair; Christine Riley, Chief of Staff; Don Gordon, Director of Design & Construction; Melissa Acker, Landscape Architect; Dr. Dee Eggers, faculty; Gregg Kormanik, faculty; Max Queen, VP of Administrative Services, AB Tech; and Chief Eric Boyce, Director of Public Safety/Chief of Police
Absent:
Dr. Kim Newsome, AVC, Student Affairs; Renee Bindewald, student; and Ben Judge, student
Staff present:
Elizabeth Becker, Assistant, Chancellor’s Office
Mr. Nelson welcomed the Working Group members to the meeting at 9:00 am. He updated the group on the consultations that occurred during his past two visits. He encouraged the group to visit the website to view the minutes of those meetings (http://www.unca.edu/about/strategic-plan/campus-master-plan/consultation...).
Mr. Nelson highlighted a few points that were brought up in the various consultations:
- Emergency Management and increased focus on personal safety
- Limited housing space
- Inadequate facilities for campus safety
- Lack of recreational facilities
- Limited space in dining services
- Signage and wayfinding
- Improve visitor experience
- Some space in Highsmith, particularly meeting rooms, is not sufficiently student-centered enough
- Need more space for off-campus students to congregate between classes (i.e., commuter lounge closer to academic areas)
- Consider building a conference center for more revenue
- NCAA recertification may require facility upgrades Inadequate facilities to obtain NCAA recertification- due to gender equity issues
- Parking issues especially with the new Sherrill Center coming on line
- Baseball and tennis not currently on campus, would like to bring it back eventually
- Repurposing the Justice Center
- Cost of on-campus housing (perception that off-campus housing is cheaper)
Don Gordon, Director of Design and Construction, formerly of Cornell University, gave a presentation of his experience with Cornell’s master planning process. A driving factor for the plan was to improve town-gown issues. Cornell focused on a 10-25 year timeframe. After stakeholders were identified, the University spent around 6 months developing their process before hiring a planning firm and an architect (Urban Strategies and Polshek Partnership Architects). Don Gordon also provided handouts on the stakeholder groups, campus perspectives and key challenges.
The group agreed that UNC Asheville has some of the same challenges that Cornell faced.
Mr. Nelson asked the group to review samples of guiding principles and a draft of UNC Asheville’s guiding principles prior to the next meeting.
Mr. Nelson concluded the meeting at 10:30 am.