For the past three years, the planned renovation of the 200-acre Central Campus has undergone several different changes, leaving many members of the community wondering why the process has taken so long.
Since being proposed in 2005, the Central Campus face lift has transformed into the current plan for "New Campus," but University officials said the amount of time spent so far is not anomalous.
"It's a lengthier process than planning a single building," President Richard Brodhead said. "The really important thing is for us to take the trouble to get the idea right before we build it, because when we build it we'll have the powerful addition to campus we had in mind."
In September 2006, the Phase I development concept plan, which Elkus Manfredi Architects helped draft , was approved by the Board of Trustees. However, instead of launching into construction, the University sought a second opinion, said Dean of Undergraduate Education Steve Nowicki-, who has been working with Executive Vice President Tallman Trask on the project.
The Trustees selected Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects as the master designer in July 2007. PCP then conducted an intensive four-month optimization analysis that examined the impact of building location in terms of environmental sustainability, transportation, cost and connectivity, among other factors.
PCP then drafted about 17 versions of plans for Central to determine more optimal uses of the land and more cost-efficient methods of construction, Nowicki said.
"When you're going to spend a half a billion dollars, you should think about it carefully," Nowicki said. "We said, 'Given the magnitude of the investment in this, it's probably a good idea to spend the extra six months to think about it,' and thank goodness we did, because the Pelli analysis really turned things around for us."
Despite recent attention, issues surrounding Central date back to the 1960s, when the area was considered "virgin," or untouched, territory in Phase Two of the 1965 Comprehensive Campus Plan. The 1964 Duke Planning Study emphasized duality and balance as the two major goals for Duke's campus, stating that a "unified campus will be achieved within 20 years" and the use of Central would be crucial to future unification.
More than 20 years later, plans for improving the campus were still under development. A 1987 Campus Planning Studies Progress Report details five concepts with different designs for each campus, one of which proposes to use Central as "the site of as many new facilities as possible."
When new Central proposals were unveiled in 2005, the plans were still preliminary and mainly involved the placement of residential buildings. By Fall 2006, the plans were sent back to the Trustees for further discussions, said Jay Ganatra, Trinity '07 and president of Campus Council for 2005-2006 and 2006-2007.
Now, the goals for New Campus have come full circle and focus again on connecting and unifying East and West campuses, Nowicki said.
"With the extension of West Campus down Campus Drive, we're actually diminishing the space difference between East Campus and West so you meet West Campus when you get to the Nasher," Nowicki said. "It's still separated, but it's tangibly a lot closer."
Former Campus Council president Ryan Todd, a senior, said the road to forming such a plan was both prolonged and circuitous.
University Architect John Pearce said reasons for change stemmed from the reanalysis of the originally chosen location along Erwin Road. Studies conducted along the road, however, showed that learning facilities presented needs separate from those of the medical center, thus shifting the campus along Campus Drive.
"You would like to have everything clear from day one, but when you're doing something as long and complicated as this, you want this to be a campus as memorable as East and West are," Provost Peter Lange said. "When you work on something and look at it and think about it, but go back, it's not that surprising that it took so long to plan."
Nowicki said although there have been talks of a 50-year plan, a five-year plan is at hand to have a substantial number of New Campus academic and residential buildings ready for the Class of 2012. Current students will also be able to return to see New Campus by their fifth-year reunion.
"I think now we passed from a good idea to a really spectacular idea," Brodhead said. "Given where we are, I can't regret the process it took to get there."
Trask could not be reached for comment.
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