Wouldn't it be cool if Duke had a monorail?
That question, fodder over the years for quite a few pie-in-the-sky conversations among late-for-class bus passengers, may not be so pie-in-the-sky after all.
The University's recently unveiled preliminary plans for the future make over of Central Campus include some type of monorail or electric train connecting East, Central and West campuses.
The proposed transit system is just one of the many innovations of the proposed changes to Central Campus, which would involve a complete gutting of almost every current structure in the 275 acre area. Officials hope a new "University Village" will rise up in the area, complete with a "Main Street" with retail space, new apartments for 800 undergraduate students and at least 200 graduate and professional school students, faculty and staff housing, a hotel, an amphitheater and an expansion of the Sarah P. Duke Gardens.
Executive Vice President Tallman Trask, who is coordinating the planning endeavor with Associate Vice President for Capital Assets Scott Selig and University Architect John Pearce, said the first phase of the project could begin as early as the summer of 2004. The overall project - still in its infant planning stages - may take as many as 20 years to complete and may cost several hundred million dollars.
The University Village will create a "vital residential neighborhood with a strong, memorable sense of place," and make the University a "walking campus," according to an informational CD distributed by the University to interested developers and architects. Perhaps most importantly, it will attempt to unite the various parts of campus.
"East and West at the moment seem like two distant stars in a large solar system," said Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta. "[With the new Central], we can create better coherence of the segments of campus, and make them neighborhoods and not separate campuses."
He added that the plans would help connect the University more with the surrounding city, especially around Ninth Street and Erwin Road.
The Main Street area will likely also include one of the hubs for the new transit system and an accompanying parking structure. Trask said the current bus system will be replaced by a more efficient and environmentally friendly transit system. Among the possibilities is a "cable-driven people mover," a 250-person capacity monorail-type electricity-powered vehicle that is currently used in Las Vegas, among other cities. Other transit options include a light rail train and an environmentally friendly "articulated" bus system.
Whatever the vehicle chosen, the transit system will likely have a new route: from East Campus through Central Campus to outside the Medical Center's Parking Deck, up Flowers Drive and stopping at a major hub in the current Allen Building lots. Trask said the "cable-driven people mover" could potentially make the trip in five minutes with multiple stops along the way.
The Allen Building lots were specified in the 2000 Master Plan as the most likely new transit convergence point on campus, as administrators and the Board of Trustees have long sought to close off the Chapel Quadrangle to all traffic, creating an enormous, completely grass-covered quad.
The area between the Social Sciences building and the Sociology-Psychology building would become the new gateway to Main West campus, with the renovated Perkins Library's new archway entrance straight ahead and the engineering quad further on down the path.
The Central Campus re-creation will be the last and perhaps most significant construction component of the University's Master Plan. The creation of the Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering Medical and Applied Sciences, French Science Building, Student Village and Perkins Library renovations will all be concentrated around Science Drive and West Campus.
Central has seen little development since it was first created more than 35 years ago - but developers have been clamoring to get a piece of the action, said Senior Vice President for Auxiliary Services Joe Pietrantoni.
"I don't think there is a university in the country that has a piece of land right in the middle of the campus that can be so completely developed," Pietrantoni said, adding that private developers will most likely fund much of the project, but will probably demand occupancy guarantees in exchange.
Trask noted that the University will still control prices and the overall direction of the architecture and design for the shops, apartments and faculty and staff housing.
"We don't want to make it look too cute. We don't want to build another Celebration," Trask said, referring to the Walt Disney-created community outside Orlando, Fla., designed to offer a glimpse at "small town America."
President Nan Keohane said she was concentrating on other projects before turning her attention towards Central.
"I think it will be quite wonderful if we can do it, but frankly it's something that I haven't been thinking about, because it seems impossible to do it right now," Keohane said.
"I know it's important to begin planning, and to be able to do it when the stars are correctly aligned - whether it's partnership with a developer or money coming in... but right now I'm focused more on some of the more immediate challenges," she said.
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