"I don't think anybody, in particular the Board of Trustees, expects this to be a continued pattern" of growth, explained Cyndi Rottenberg-Walker, a planner with Urban Strategies Inc., one of the firms Cornell enlisted to develop the master plan. "Obviously you reach a point where the financial sustainability of continued growth at this level is something you would continue to question."
And question it has. Cornell's contingency plan for the next 25 years was finally revealed last week in its full glory, after more than 19-month-long process of research, debate, preparation and review. Only two milestones - finalization of the plan and transfer of the campus model - remain on the university's master plan process; the rest have already been met since the plan's kick off in March 2006.
The plan deals primarily in answering the question of where to grow, considering Cornell's geographic constraints. Sandwiched between the two creeks on its north and south, the campus has gradually been expanding eastward, explained Rottenberg-Walker at last week's open houses. "What if growth continues at a higher level?" she asked. The master plan deals with "how you might be able to accommodate more [growth] while still achieving things like a compact footprint."
The desire for compactness and smart growth is just about the only element of Cornell's master plan that is certain. The master plan deals only in the hypothetical: if population growth continues what kind of expansion or building could be needed, where that growth might take place and what it might look like, stressed Mina Amundsen, a Cornell university planner.
"This is unusual planning. We are not planning for new buildings that are going to happen. We're looking at the long-term development of the campus - 10 to 25 to 50 years out, what could the campus look like," she noted, repeating the same disclaimer she used at the open houses. "We have a whole lot of choices. We are specifying where we can grow and also where not putting something would be a good idea."
Amundsen and Rottenberg-Walker both underscored the importance of using Cornell's current footprint responsibly. The planners were charged with looking at the campus' buildings, its open spaces and its current population centers for areas to expand, rather than resorting to suburban sprawl. What they came up with was a modern take on the campus' traditional convergence between agricultural, athletic and academic uses. "This plan is actually trying to continue that unique relationship," Rottenberg-Walker added.
"Obviously this land is unique in its characteristics, [its] unique character and opportunity of the significant amount of countryside that Cornell occupies and is able to protect for the long term," she continued. "This is a fundamentally unusual circumstance. It's a resource that will be protected in perpetuity. It's something we've spent a lot of time thinking about."
Surrounded by suburban growth, the Cornell campus is one of the last bastions of "empty" space in the area. As a land-grant university, Cornell also has a unique amount of undeveloped - but not unused - agricultural space on the east side of the campus. "We want to grow, but grow in a responsible way. How do we keep within a very small environmental footprint?" Amundsen said.
One of the biggest changes that would support Cornell's stated commitment to green building, sustainability and environmental awareness is the proposed "circulator," a bus system that would run in tandem with Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit, or TCAT. The circulator would form a circular route around campus (used solely by a new campus bus system) that would connect the academic, agriculture and athletic areas, as well residential areas to the north and the growing population center to the east, at Ellis Hollow.
"The idea is to have this thing work with TCAT. What they're looking at is how can we work with TCAT and make their routes more [efficient]," Amundsen said, adding that it would be "foolish" to get rid of TCAT. "We'd like to...create more opportunities for walking and biking and to connect with transit. We're looking for people to live closer, and on the campus if there are areas that would be good for residential development," she continued.
Adapting a trend common to many cities these days, the planners looked for opportunities for mixed-use development and population density. In the campus core, the possibility of placing residential units on top of academic buildings and adding small retail units, such as cafés, was envisioned in one slide during the open house. Currently, a lack of population density on campus has prevented any viable opportunities for retail development, Rottenberg-Walker explained.
"One of the challenges Cornell faces is amenities - being able to get lunch after 3 o'clock is very difficult. Providing a population base [of] residents [during] a good part of the day...is actually a very interesting way to try and create more opportunity" for amenities, she said. Finding campus and community groups support for vertical growth, such as residential towers, in the center of campus could be a challenge, however.
Just south of campus, the East Hill area is primed for significant population and commercial growth. Amundsen explained two ways to look at growth in the east: keeping what's there intact and adding more people to create a population base. With the bus circulator in place, the area could become a major residential center for academic and support staff. "Some of the people who live there might just walk to their offices or central campus," she said.
Eastwood Plaza, which currently consists of one-story, medium-box retail units, could be expanded to accommodate the growth; alternately - and perhaps preferably - two- or three-story development could prevent sprawl and "get much more from the same piece of land. The potential is to add residential and office functions to the commercial," Amundsen said, although she expressed some hesitancy about whether enough population growth will actually occur to support a mixed-use node there.
Tompkins County Area Development vice president and director of economic development planning Martha Armstrong agreed that building up the East Hill area could be a boon to commercial prospects in the area. "We definitely are looking at housing development as a key issue for economic development. Providing more housing anywhere, particularly in high-density volume...that's a great-looking project," she said.
Though TCAD defers to the county planning department when it comes to planning commercial developments, Armstrong said TCAD feels "really positive" about Cornell's master plan. "The growth of Cornell physically is really nicely contained. I think it works well with our economic development vision for the county, and certainly the kind of research expansion that's part of this master plan is important not only to Cornell but the greater [area]," she said.
The plan seems to be in line with the county's push for nodal development and more effective transportation to cut down on traffic and environmental effects. Additionally, Cornell worked with the city and county, the Town of Dryden, and the Town and Village of Lansing throughout the planning process. Amundsend added, "The people from the university live in those communities. You can't separate the two."
As for the actual numbers, Cornell's plans for growth could affect a significant chunk of Tompkins County's nearly 14 million square feet of development. As part of the master plan, about 3.4 million square feet on the Cornell campus is being considered for adaptive reuse, opening up a bevy of opportunity for green space and new construction. The plan also calls for replacing surface parking lots with open space, higher buildings or underground garages, as is the case with the plan for the School of Art, Architecture and Planning's new Milstein Hall.
With all this conjecturing, the future of Cornell's campus still comes down to what ifs and maybes. "We see the opportunities that we'd very much like to explore, but we'd do those in consultation with the city and the town. You don't want to be the 800 pound gorilla, and that's one of the founding sensibilities of the plan, too," Amundsend said. "The community - the greater Cornell and Ithaca communities - are very important to our future."
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