BUILDING A TOWN OUR COLLEGE CAN BE PROUD OF
Author: Otis White's Urban Notebook - Governing Magazine
08/14/2006
Website: http://www.governing.com/notebook.htm
Close observers of colleges and cities know that, in the past decade or so, the two have rediscovered one another. That is, cities have come to appreciate that their colleges are factories of human capital that are central to their well-being. And colleges have come to recognize that a major reason students choose their schools is what lies off campus. Well, the romance of town and gown has reached a milestone: A major state university plans to demolish and rebuild its host city’s downtown so it’s more attractive to students and residents alike.
OK, so it’s the University of Connecticut, whose host community is Storrs. (Storrs’ population is 11,000, most of whom are students. In the peculiar geography of Connecticut, Storrs is a “census-designated place” contained within the larger town of Mansfield.) This isn’t exactly like, say, Columbia leveling the Upper West Side of New York or the University of Pennsylvania knocking down West Philadelphia. But it does signal the growing appreciation colleges have for their surroundings — and vice versa.
Background: Hardly anyone attends UConn today because it’s nestled in a classic college town like Charlottesville, Va., Ann Arbor, Mich., or Lawrence, Kan. That’s because it isn’t. As the New York Times reported recently, Storrs’ “meager downtown ... looks more like a makeshift set for a Hollywood western than a New England college center.” Result, said a developer working on the remake of Storrs: “Students came and saw there was no sense of place.”
So the university and the town of Mansfield agreed it was in each’s interest to create the place students were looking for. Good site: Storrs’ existing commercial center, with its abundance of empty stores, which happens to be near the university’s new fine arts center. The idea is to knock down most of the buildings in the 49-acre site and create a new-urbanist downtown, with condos, apartments, stores, restaurants and community facilities. How new-urbanist is the new Storrs likely to be? Very. Only 15 of the 49 acres will have buildings, the Times reported; the rest will be a made-from-scratch town square and other green space. The end result, developers say: Storrs will have an easily walkable downtown that’s convenient to the fine arts center.
There’s more: Mansfield is lobbying the state to remake a highway skirting the campus to add to the ambiance. “The idea is to change Route 195 from a highway to a main street,” the mayor told a Times reporter.
Why would Mansfield agree to such an extreme makeover? Because what appeals to students will also appeal to others, the developer said. “This project offers an incredible opportunity to bring together families who live in the town, retired and working professors and students,” he told the Times. “It depends upon appealing to this broad spectrum, and the more you do it, the more vital it will be.”
It’s about time, said one admissions officer at the university. The main reason UConn enrolls only a third of those it admits is because students are turned off to the town. He was surprised himself, he went on, when he and his family arrived five years ago in search of a college-town experience. “We found out there was a college, but no town,” he added. “It’s beyond time that Storrs should have a town.”
Note: Civic Strategies has worked with colleges on community development issues, though not in the state of Connecticut.
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