Alumni motoring to campus along Angela Boulevard for a football
game this fall may wonder who moved the football stadium.
It isn't the stadium that's moved, it's Angela.
The boulevard, which changes its name to Edison Road east of
Notre Dame Avenue, used to bend northward toward campus before
intersecting with Juniper Road in front of the parking lots for
the Joyce Center and Notre Dame Stadium. Now it runs in a straight
line past the campus, starting at the palatial new Notre Dame
Avenue entrance, but farther south.
At certain points along the route, woods stand between the new
roadway and campus. And then there's the enormous new Marie P.
DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts, anchoring the south
end of the DeBartolo Quad. As a result, if you're driving in from
the west, you can hardly even glimpse the stadium now until you're
past it.
The rerouting of Angela/Edison and upgrade of the ceremonial
entrance to campus are only part of a flurry of construction,
destruction and relocation that's been taking place on campus
the past few years. Almost all of it has been guided by an elaborate
campus master plan adopted in 2002.
Among other things, the plan:
-- Stakes out locations for more than a dozen new buildings
or major additions to existing facilities. One of the new ones,
a combination police station and post office near Stepan Center,
opened in January but looks as though it's stood there for decades
because of its old-fashion collegiate gothic design.
-- Designates 19 buildings for preservation in perpetuity. These
include such traditional landmarks as the Main Building and Sacred
Heart Basilica but also the Student Health Center and four dorms:
Alumni, Dillon, Lyons and Sorin.
-- Throws a lasso around a section of the existing campus to
mark off a development boundary, a footprint outside of which
Notre Dame has decided it will not build.
It's this last measure, the development boundary, that University
Architect Doug Marsh calls the "real genius" of the campus plan.
The boundary is designed to prevent sprawl -- new development
at the outer reaches of campus. As was demonstrated in U.S. cities
during the growth of suburbia, when new development is concentrated
on the outer edges of an area, people tend to abandon the core
(downtown, in the case of cities), and it decays. The new plan,
which Marsh says is intended to guide development for the next
10 to 15 years, does the opposite. It aims to preserve Notre Dame's
historic core and keep the campus walker-friendly.
Because administrators have identified needs for many new facilities,
that's going to require "infilling" the footprint. An example
is the new Jordan Hall of Science, expected to be completed a
year from now along Juniper Road just north of the Joyce Center.
Except Juniper Road won't be Juniper Road a year from now. It's
going to be closed to traffic and eventually torn out altogether.
Removing the road (a new road that merges with Ivy Road will
carry traffic around the campus to the east) will speed commutes
and improve the safety of pedestrians headed to the Hall of Science,
the Rolfs Sports Recreation Center and everything else east of
Juniper. The plan also calls for the eventual construction of
two dorms in the Juniper roadway. They'll be near the present
Pasquerilla East and Knott residence halls. A third new residence
hall will be built next to McGlinn Hall, near the original campus
golf course. The new dorms aren't for accommodating any major
increase in enrollment but rather to relieve crowding in the existing
halls, Marsh says.
Ripping out Juniper also will make it possible to knit together
the parking lots of the Joyce Center and football stadium. And
the lots will be spruced up with trees.
According to James Lyphout, vice president of business operations,
the campus will gain about 250 acres from the removal of Juniper
and the straightening out of Angela/Edison. The current campus
covers about 1,200 acres, he said.
Infilling doesn't mean clogging up the South Quad and other
open spaces with new buildings. In fact, the campus of the future
looks greener than ever. For example, the concrete expanse behind
the South Dining Hall and South Quad dorms is going to be turned
into athletic fields and a greensward. And at the southern end
of campus, a large public park-like Town Common is planned as
a buffer between the performing arts center and South Bend's Northeast
Neighborhood.
Natural vacancies for buildings exist in several places within
the development boundary, especially on the DeBartolo Quad. There
the plans call for three new buildings -- for business, engineering
and social sciences -- plus additions to the Law School and possibly
McKenna Hall, the Center for Continuing Education.
Lyphout says fund raising is furthest along for the engineering
building and law school addition (see "Gift advances law school
expansion," page 5), but ground isn't expected to be broken for
either project for another two to three years. A policy adopted
by University trustees four years ago requires that before any
building can get started, 100 percent of the money must be pledged,
with 75 percent in hand and the other 25 percent due within five
years.
Other space is expected to become available as aging and less-beloved
buildings fall to the wrecking ball. An example is the former
Security Building on the west end of campus. Currently serving
as the temporary home of University Health Services while the
old infirmary behind the Main Building is renovated, the building
dates to World War II and was supposed to be temporary. The campus
plan calls for a large inn and conference center to be constructed
on the site, which overlooks Saint Mary's Lake. But with the fund-raising
threshold yet to be reached, nothing is imminent.
Marsh says the campus plan was designed to be flexible. In fact,
it already has been altered in a significant way. A building not
anticipated by the plan -- a center for research in biomedical
engineering -- is being constructed next to the Hessert Center
for Aerospace Research Center, near the north end of campus. Federal
money is being used to build it.
"The plan will evolve," says Marsh of unexpected opportunities
like the biomedical center. "The tenets are permanent."
He's referring to seven principles agreed upon by University
officers and trustees to guide future campus development. Among
other directives, the tenets call for preserving the Grotto and
other sacred spaces and creating new ones to reinforce the Catholic
identity of the University, and for maintaining the pastoral,
wooded look of campus. Also, buildings will be designed in collegiate
gothic and similar historic styles that have become the norm again
at Notre Dame since construction of the Eck Visitors' Center and
bookstore in the 1990s.
"I can't tell you how many times people have told me thank you
for bringing it back," Marsh says.
In 2001, 12 fifth-year architecture students spent a semester
studying the new campus master plan. Then they developed what
they felt was a better alternative. Learn more about their plan
at www.nd.edu/~ndmag/au2005/otherplan.html.
Ed Cohen is an associate editor of this magazine.
(October 2005)
