In a town hall-style meeting Wednesday night, Duke senior administrators updated Durham residents on the status of the University?s plans for large-scale Central Campus revitalization. Dozens of residents showed up to the event, seeking to learn more about the plans and to have their opinions heard.
In a town hall-style meeting Wednesday night, Duke senior administrators updated Durham residents on the status of the University’s plans for large-scale Central Campus revitalization. Dozens of residents showed up to the event, seeking to learn more about the plans and to have their opinions heard.
In a presentation, which came a day after a similar event addressed to students, Provost Peter Lange, Vice President for Campus Services Kemel Dawkins and Director of Community Affairs Michael Palmer stressed that the plans for revamping Central are still very much in the “conceptualizing” stage.
Though the University is only at the very beginning of a process that could take decades, the short-term priority is to provide new living space, with 1,200 beds slated to be completed on Central by August 2007, Lange said.
Beyond the initial space concerns, however, Lange said the goal is to have an “urban” Central that would connect East Campus and West Campus rather than function as a “peripheral” campus.
“We want Central to be a place where students do things, where they live there, where they go there for activities,” Lange said.
While Lange said he hopes the new amenities will make Central a more vital part of the residential experience, he emphasized that he did not want Central to harm the surrounding community.
“Duke has a fundamental interest in the economic health of Durham,” he said. “We have an institutional interest in making sure adjacent properties are thriving.”
The Central Campus Planning Committee, chaired by Lange and Dawkins, has formed four subcommittees to mull options for housing and dining, academic programs, extracurricular activities and spaces, and community relations. The four subcommittees are scheduled to report back to the principal committee Monday with broad recommendations rather than specific proposals. That main CCPC branch will then deliver a progress report to the Board of Trustees in May, but Dawkins said that “even at that point we will be very far from putting a shovel in the ground and building anything.”
Many local residents in attendance Wednesday were primarily concerned with how the Central development plans would impact the Durham community and local businesses. Some Durham residents have voiced concerns that the new Central—which in concept could include, along with academic, residential and student group space, outlets like bookstores or restaurants—would hurt local businesses and insulate students from Durham.
Primary to their concerns is the type of zoning ordinance under which the new Central will be built. Although Lange and the other administrators stressed that the University is not yet prepared to decide on what kind of zoning it will seek for the area because plans are not yet concrete enough, some residents raised a number of concerns about potential zoning implications.
Currently Central Campus is a residential zone, but the new Central could conceivably be rezoned as a university zone—like East and West Campuses—or even partially as a mixed use or general commercial zone, which would allow many types of businesses to locate on Central.
University zoning allows for “limited retail...to the extent that [retail facilities] are designed to serve the campus population of the University,” according to a March e-mail sent by City Planning Director Frank Duke to neighborhood representatives. Businesses that open on a university zone are property-tax exempt, which some Duke neighbors have charged would provide retailers with an unfair advantage.
Palmer said Wednesday that Duke was likely to pursue a university zoning ordinance. “I don’t think it’s anyone’s choice to do anything other than a university zone,” he said.
But when John Schelp, president of the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association, which includes Ninth Street, asked Palmer why Duke could not commit to a zoning plan now, Palmer responded by saying “we’re not in the zoning phase at this time. We’ll make that [decision] when we see the site plan—that triggers the process. We want to go through the programming phase before we do that.”
Members of the audience also urged the University to add local residents to the planning committees, which currently consist of administrators, faculty and students. But neighbors were mostly focused on simply being part of the dialogue with Duke.
“It’s a pretty difficult process to plan something that’s 75 years in development, but it has to be linked to the area around it,” area resident Tom Newman said. “If Duke continues to show concern, if we leave our attitudes at the door, I think this will work out really well.”
Editor Karen Hauptman, a member of the activities and services planning committee, was not involved in the writing or editing of this article.
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