What's the deal with Central Campus? Late in July, President Richard Brodhead said students would be moving into the cushy new "student village" in the fall of 2008. As the weeks and dollars keep on rolling by, so does the Central move-in date.
"September 2008 is unlikely now," Tallman Trask, executive vice president, says. "It's not impossible, but it's getting close to it."
Trask says the University now may elect to open the housing in stages, some of it in the fall of 2009, the rest of it in the spring of 2010-when the disproportionate number of students expected to study abroad will return to Duke.
Meanwhile, administrators are still unsure of how much Central will cost and how it will be financed-let alone how it looks. Trask says the target cost of Phase I construction will cost $240 million, with an average cost of $300 per square foot over 800,000 square feet. But if architectural plans exceed that price tag, they'll have to go back to the drawing boards. And Phase I, in which Duke will construct 14 new buildings, only accounts for about 20 percent of the entire project.
"The assumption is that [Phase I] will be paid with tax-exempt debt," Trask says. "Then, of course, the question is how to pay that debt. There will be some revenue from Central, fundraising support with some university funds.... Duke has enough money to pay for Central Campus [without debt-financing plans] if it wants to do that."
Parking also remains unclear. Provost Peter Lange says that, according to current plans, students living on Central will have to park in the Blue Zone.
"That's my current expectation," he says. "But there's no well and fully developed parking plan."
Trask, however, assures that there will be student parking available on Central.
"The notion that we would tell people [living on Central] to park in the Blue Zone is off the wall," Trask says. "The students who live on Central will be allowed to park there."
When students hit the village, it's unlikely to disappoint, says Eddie Hull, director of residence life and housing services. The new Central will most likely sport two types of living space for upperclassmen. One of those apartment designs will be a one-person "efficiency" apartment, accounting for about one-quarter of the bed space on Central. The other three quarters will be designed as four bedroom units with one person per bedroom, a commons space and a kitchen. Hull declined to common on actual square footage but promised the space "is really quite generous."
Hull says Central-which aims to link West and East campuses-will adopt the "new urbanist" style of architecture.
"There's the suggestion of a Main Street sort of feel," Hull says. "The ground floor of the buildings will be dedicated to services, retail, academics. Some buildings will be strictly academic in nature, and all the housing apartments will be above the first floor."
The administration says that with such a grand scheme for Central, it's inevitable that the planning stage will take a while.
"It's just a very large process which has many moving parts that have to be brought together in a certain matter," Lange says.
But while the ink dries, a number of the quads on West Campus are long overdue for renovations. While the University has had to delay or forego some improvements-notably in Craven and Few Quads-Hull says that the Central Campus work has not been a factor.
With renovation necessitating an ever-unpopular housing rate hike, Hull instead suggests that the University just doesn't want to make any false moves.
"Kilgo cost $30 million," he says. "Craven will cost even more. There are some really hard questions with dollar signs behind them. The university is really trying to make the best and most informed decision about which direction, because we get a chance to do it once. We want to spend our students' money as wisely as possible."
In the meantime, there's nothing much else for students to do but sit and wait.
"The frustrating thing is that it's still really preliminary, but if it's anything like what was suggested in presentations to the trustees and student leaders and staff, it's going to be an exceptional, exceptional project."
Rob Copeland contributed reporting for this story.
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