After months of meetings, the final draft of the University's campus master plan has been completed. It will be presented to the Board of Trustees in May.
The final draft differs only slightly from the original version distributed in November. "It's 98 percent what you saw last time...," said Executive Vice President Tallman Trask. "It's been refined based on comments and the wording's been changed here and there, but there have been no substantial changes."
The most noteworthy changes occurred in overall goals, implementation structure and campus circulation and transportation.
First, planners added two goals to the seven already listed: "Duke is an internationally recognized Medical Center" and "Duke is a citizen of Durham and the region."
The newest version includes a revised implementation structure that clarifies the process by which projects are created and approved. "I think there was some redundancy in the first draft, and we simplified that," said master planning consultant Lee Copeland.
Under this version, the Master Plan Implementation Committee, which will be created which will be created if the plan is passed, would be largely responsible for project creation and master plan oversight. This high-level group, which will be chaired by Trask, will create the action plans and oversee the action plan committees.
The final draft also clarifies the campus circulation concepts, using drawings to show how cars circulate on the periphery of a mostly pedestrian campus. Copeland said the new draft stresses that there should only be about a five-minute walk between parking and most campus destinations.
University Architect John Pearce said feedback from academic committees and the community at large was most helpful on questions about transportation and parking, because these are the issues that affect employees and faculty members every day.
Trask also emphasized that all of the drawings in the master plan are only possible illustrations, not projects that will necessarily be undertaken.
The master plan document also contains the Action Plan 2000, which includes the improvements the University would like to work on in the next year. The projects-which at various stages-include revamping the connection between East Campus and Ninth Street and creating a walkway through the woods between the Bryan Center and the Sanford Institute of Public Policy.
This action plan will be approved separately by the Trustees' Buildings and Grounds committee, and administrators will start working next year.
The main changes since the November version of the action plan include the addition of a new building for the Eye Center and changing the name of the proposed Science Drive Plaza to the Engineering Plaza.
The Academic Council will consider approval of the master plan, but not the action plan, at its Thursday afternoon meeting.
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