Plans for River Campus

This popped up in my Google alerts today... something fun for all you Pilot faithful to check out.

http://www.portlandonline.com/bps/index.cfm?a=293213&c=52163

The City Council is holding a meeting this afternoon on the River Plan, and included in it will be a vote on a resolution concerning UP. The link will take you to the text of the resolution as well as a mock-up of future development plans.

Of note... the location of the new recreation facility (across from Chiles, where the baseball field currently is); a new parking garage on Portsmouth St across from Holy Cross Court and Corrado Hall; a huge, connected library/student union building (in place of current library and Pilot House); another new dorm across from Fields and Schoenfeldt Halls; greenspace where the current parking lot is and where the baseball field is; and, of course, a baseball field, environmental lab/learning center, physical plant, tennis center, crew house, and storage facilities down on the River Campus.

It might take 50 years, but dang... wouldn't that be awesome?

Looks pretty nice. That could be a cool baseball venue.

I assume the white box where the LP Tennis Center now stands will be the new PilotNation Clubhouse... plans are still in the works. (Brewery permits, etc. take time).

Will the small dock be big enough for the S.S. PilotNation yacht?

Well, I don't know, we were thinking of turning an old tug into a party cruiser... I mean, who doesn't want to party on a 5000 horsepower, I mean if need be we could pull a VIP party barge too...

Looks like I saw this too late. But let me tell you, the public testimony portions of City Council sessions in Portland are FANTASTIC for people watching. I was at the meeting where they took testimony on the final agreement between Merritt and the city for renovating PGE Park. There were a couple people who were opposed to it and there is no way I would have believed they said what they did unless I was there myself.

Put it this way: If you're an elected official in this town you have to be prepared to spend a lot of your day listening to...interesting...perspectives.

River plan approved unanimously: LINK.

And the track is where?

Woodless! wrote:And the track is where?

It's inside Chiles

Actually, I've heard that they will be putting an actually *good* indoor track in the new Howard Hall. Not an official one where you could hold real indoor meets, but definitely something you could train on - I think half-size, so 8 laps would be 1 mile.

When is all this construction going to start? I mean we have plans for a new library, cove, howard hall, river campus? Also, they are planning on building the new library/cove on the existing site...I think I need some explanation about how they are planning on demolishing a library without a new one ready to go.

A very large book sale?

All very good questions!

For the most part, the timeline depends on donations.

I do know that there is a lot of momentum for the new Howard Hall. Everyone knows we need a new one and it is, from what I understand, the top priority and will be the first thing built.

The big question is where it will be located. There are a few options: where the current Howard Hall is (which might not really accomidate the footprint very well), where the baseball field is (a nice location, but then where does baseball play?), over by Public Safety (probably the easiest spot, but perhaps too far away?), by The Commons/Tennis Center (a beautiful little spot, but also small and out of the way).

So that's the big decision, really. Once a location is finally settled on, I think things can start to move. They have already done all kinds of planning meetings about the facility - really, it's going to be pretty spectacular: a track, several gyms, huge workout space, several "private" rooms for aerobics, yoga, etc. Not sure about a pool... that really increases the cost, so I think that's still up in the air at this point.

Don't expect anything to get started on the River Campus for a few years yet - there is still a lot of clean-up work that needs to be done, and before anything can get started the first step will be building a new road down there, which will be quite an expense in and of itself. My guess, which is based on nothing other than a hunch and a basic understanding of what still needs to be done, is that it will be at least 3-4 years before anything gets started down there. And it could be much longer than that depending on how much money is available.

The hope is to build a parking structure on the corner of Portsmouth and McKenna McCosh (across the street from Corrado Hall), which you will be able to drive into from the "top floor" and be able to circle around and exit at the bottom. Once that is built, that will open up the parking lot for redevelopment, which will be a huge step. I know has also been talk of eventually closing the current main entrance to reclaim that space (from Willamette to the Pilot House) and making Portsmouth the main entrance, which would make sense once a parking garage is there.

As for the Cove/Library... yes, I have seen plans that would connect the two buildings. What I don't know is if it will be a tear-down/rebuild or a retrofitting. When that does happen, I'm sure they will find a temporary home for the library... the mezzanine level of Chiles maybe? Seems like that probably would be the best spot, especially if the new Howard is up and running. When Santa Clara built their new library, the used their soccer stadium as the temporary home.

And actually, the function of a library has changed dramatically in the past 10 years. Does a school even need a giant edifice with endless stacks of books anymore? Pretty much all research is done online now, and I wonder how many kids are really digging into that massive collection of dusty old academic books and what not. And with what Google is doing with scanning books, who knows what kind of imapct that will have in the next 10 years. So I think what you'll end up seeing with a new library is yes, the traditional layout of stacks, but a much greater emphasis on study space, work rooms, interactive media, computer labs, etc. In some ways, we're fortunate we didn't build some gigantic albatross of a library 10 years ago. Now we can build one that is sleek, modern, and caters to the needs of 21st century students.

Very informative. Thank you

Stonehouse wrote:
And actually, the function of a library has changed dramatically in the past 10 years. Does a school even need a giant edifice with endless stacks of books anymore? Pretty much all research is done online now, and I wonder how many kids are really digging into that massive collection of dusty old academic books and what not. And with what Google is doing with scanning books, who knows what kind of imapct that will have in the next 10 years. So I think what you'll end up seeing with a new library is yes, the traditional layout of stacks, but a much greater emphasis on study space, work rooms, interactive media, computer labs, etc. In some ways, we're fortunate we didn't build some gigantic albatross of a library 10 years ago. Now we can build one that is sleek, modern, and caters to the needs of 21st century students.

As a science major, no, I rarely looked for actual books in the library because by the time research gets into a book it's really not that new. What I did do was spend a lot of time searching for journal articles online, then finding them in the basement if I needed the full text.

I found it most helpful for theology. Parallel Bible all the way!

Oh for sure! I'm not saying I think libraries are obsolete. Not at all.

I'm just saying that 10-15 years ago, when schools were building libraries they were building these huge palatial buildings that screamed "college," which I'm sure are beautiful sctructures but today? Probably not necessary, given the prevelance of on-line journals and the move away from hard-back books and towards digital. I mean... 20 years from now, will all students have a Kindle or something like it and just download books? I don't know, but I'd say it's more likely that than kids going to the card catalog, writing down the Dewey Decimal number, and going to find a book in the stacks.

I am really excited by how cool, modern, and useful the new UP library can potentially be, with great study space, all kinds of great new technology, meeting rooms, etc etc.

Until they digitize the 1918 encyclopedia Britanica ( articles by Einstein, Freud, Woodrow Wilson, Lenin, etc.) I'm skeptical.

Stonehouse wrote:20 years from now, will all students have a Kindle or something like it and just download books?

I think that's what Apple was anticipating with the whole iPad thing.

Portland City Council unanimously approves UP's mitigation plan:

LINK

River Campus update
City says ‘yes’ to UP in a 5-0 vote

Wednesday, the Portland City Commission voted unanimously to approve UP's mitigation plan, moving the University one step closer to the development of River Campus.

The plan will decrease environmental protection zones on the bluff behind Corrado Hall, where UP hopes to build a parking structure linking the university's current campus to its waterfront property purchased in 2008.

In exchange for changes to the environmental zones, UP will create over 200,000 square feet of protected wilderness area along the bluff, including protected habitat for endangered White Oak trees.

Had City Council rejected the mitigation plan, UP wouldn't have been able to build on the protected land without conducting an alternate site analysis for the parking structure.

"Obviously, I'm very very pleased about [the vote]," Jim Kunner, assistant vice principal for financial affairs said.

Now, the gateway structure will undergo a separate review before its construction.

"We look forward to good things to come on that property," Kuffner said.

Timeline from a seperate Beacon article:

LINK

1994
The conditional Master Plan for UP was revised, which included a boundary expansion encompassing most of the area now known as the "gateway" site at Portsmouth and McCosh.

2008
UP finalized its purchase of the Triangle Park property.

January 2010
The City of Portland expanded Conservation Protection Zones along the bluff on campus.

April 2010
City Council ruled that UP and the City should create a Development Plan.

Oct. 21, 2010
UP's open house on campus to share its mitigation plan with the community.

Nov. 17, 2010
UP will present the Plan in an official City Council hearing.

Dec. 1, 2010
City Council will vote on the mitigation plan.

Spring 2011
Projected implementation of the mitigation plan set to begin.

2012
Clean-up of the River Campus scheduled to finish.

2020s
UP hopes development of the River Campus is well underway.

Assistant Vice Principal?

Glad to see Stony Pére got a promotion. Wasn't he the guy who caught us smoking in the boy's room in high school?

Good to see the property will make it's first steps toward becoming an integral part of the campus and the community. I think it's a win-win for all concerned.

Stonehouse wrote:Oh for sure! I'm not saying I think libraries are obsolete. Not at all.

I'm just saying that 10-15 years ago, when schools were building libraries they were building these huge palatial buildings that screamed "college," which I'm sure are beautiful sctructures but today? Probably not necessary, given the prevelance of on-line journals and the move away from hard-back books and towards digital. I mean... 20 years from now, will all students have a Kindle or something like it and just download books? I don't know, but I'd say it's more likely that than kids going to the card catalog, writing down the Dewey Decimal number, and going to find a book in the stacks.

I am really excited by how cool, modern, and useful the new UP library can potentially be, with great study space, all kinds of great new technology, meeting rooms, etc etc.

Some really interesting points. Yeah, I think that Kindle, inter-library loans, on-line journals, and the proximity of Powell's Books changes everything for UP. Things change so quickly. I can't imagine in 20 years from now...when other newspapers besides the Seattle PI have gone defunct, I might be saying to my grandkids, "Back when I was a boy, we used to have this thing called the newspaper, and we kept books in a library." Oh brother...

I can't say I agree. The Internet and digital media is great. Nobody uses it more than I do. But part of the function of a library is to archive thoughts and works from the past, and much of that isn't digital.

My classic examples are the 1918 Brittanica, or Webster's Second edition, which archive the start of the modern world and show us how people thought About their world in the past. Parts of it are quaint, but the language is from a different world. When you see an article by Freud in the Brittanica and see what he actually thought is a lot different than modern interpretations, or when you see that Einstein ( in the same edition) was capable of making abstract concepts on space and time easy to understand, it gives you a whole different view of their world.

The Icelandic sagas would be just comic books now if digital media kept morfing it and erasing the older versions.

And, as our PortlandPilots website shows, parts of the past get erased completely. Name the UP soccer lineup from 1992.
You can find it online still, but not from our site. Soon, it will be lost digitally forever. Your thoughts are at the mercy of a webmaster.

Digital media are still too transitory.

Purplegeezer wrote:I can't say I agree. The Internet and digital media is great. Nobody uses it more than I do. But part of the function of a library is to archive thoughts and works from the past, and much of that isn't digital.

My classic examples are the 1918 Brittanica, or Webster's Second edition, which archive the start of the modern world and show us how people thought About their world in the past. Parts of it are quaint, but the language is from a different world. When you see an article by Freud in the Brittanica and see what he actually thought is a lot different than modern interpretations, or when you see that Einstein ( in the same edition) was capable of making abstract concepts on space and time easy to understand, it gives you a whole different view of their world.

The Icelandic sagas would be just comic books now if digital media kept morfing it and erasing the older versions.

And, as our PortlandPilots website shows, parts of the past get erased completely. Name the UP soccer lineup from 1992.
You can find it online still, but not from our site. Soon, it will be lost digitally forever. Your thoughts are at the mercy of a webmaster.

MESA AGREESWITH gEEZ

Digital media are still too transitory.

[b]

Last year for my senior project, my group designed a new library for campus. The first semester of our project was a lot of research with faculty, administrators and students on what they wanted. Most of the information was taken from a 2006 Library Needs Assessment. The current library is way out of date and is not up to a lot of building codes, so if a remodel of the original building were to be done, they would need to address all of the current issues which would be extremely expensive. There were two different opinions that we heard time and time again. the first option would be to demolish the existing building and build new on the current site, the other option would be to move the library, one site that was proposed is the tennis center site. Either way the University is looking to have a more modern library with ample 24 hour space. They want tech services to be in the building and brought up adding a coffee shop/lounge area. It was also important to the library to maintain a bit of traditional library assets. The way my group decided to keep plenty of books on site was to have half of the basement dedicated to compact stacks which allow a student to browse the catalog on a computer and then choose a book that is located in stacks that are compactly arranged next to each other. The stacks move on mechanical tracks and an aisle is formed where needed to retrieve a book. There is already a little bit of funding for the library but it is estimated that the university needs about $10 million more to start the planning and construction of a new library.