The campus of Newsweek’s “Hottest Small State School” in the nation is looking kind of dowdy these days, and it’s not just the long winter that’s to blame. Built for the most part in the Rockefeller-era spate of 1960s state construction, SUNY New Paltz has been working hard to improve the quality of both its student body and its faculty. But the physical facilities are another story. Though individual buildings have been renovated and modernized, the look and cohesion of the 257-acre, 8,000-student campus – how it all fits together – has not received the same degree of attention.
According to the recently released findings of a 17-person lay committee from the New Paltz campus community, the consequences of decisions about individual physical changes “made without sufficient consideration of their long-term aesthetic and operational impact” have been largely negative. The campus is not perceived as inviting. Parking intrudes. The presence of temporary buildings destroys open space. Systems of pathways confuse. Connections between buildings need strengthening. And the college could be, in the understatement of a recent report, “an even stronger steward of the environment.”
For about $45 million spent over the next 15 years, the SUNY New Paltz Site and Landscape Master Plan Committee, co-chaired by professor of English Stella Deen and facilities manager John Shupe, says that those problems could be addressed and in some cases solved. The committee was assisted in its work by an internationally active firm, Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects. Curiously, the total bottom-line price, which does not include new buildings, additions or the relocation of major utilities, appears nowhere in the version of the master plan posted online by the college late last week just as bootleg copies distributed by participants were being made widely available.
Prior to publication of the master plan, community gossip was focused on a four-story (or perhaps five-story, judging by a rendering) academic building on the southwest corner of Plattekill Avenue and Route 32. Unfortunately, a pedestrian walk-through, meant to signal the metaphorical openness of this campus corner (“The Corner”), was rendered grander than it needs to be, further infuriating the residents of the many small homes in the neighborhood. “Housing the sciences,“ gushes the text, “this new building presents a wonderful opportunity to incorporate emerging technologies to meet sustainable needs such as photovoltaic panels, rain-water collection, and green roofs.”
The master plan proposes that the college, like many another outer-directed entity, lavish great efforts on cultivating a positive first impression with outsiders. This will be accomplished by “The Arrival,” featuring “a grand entrance drive” past a sprawling, glassy Morris-Lapidus-type structure in which admissions, alumni and welcome functions could be concentrated.
The text sets the stage. “A potential new building site overlooks a charming campus lawn with a new water feature, bringing the campus’ iconic ‘Gunk’ to the arrival experience,” it explains. “Located at the intersection of the romantic, less formal portions of the campus, and the orthogonal, more urban part of campus, the arrival incorporates elements of both.” One can only hope the visitors won’t feel soaked.
Other aspects of the plan work better. Mohonk Walk, a heavily treed Unter-den-Linden east-west pedestrian boulevard along the path of the former Mohonk Avenue, could bring greater cohesion to the campus. The rescue of building quadrangles and their strengthening by strategic building additions could solve space needs and add grace to the settings at the same time.
An analysis revealed “an overabundance of parking in aesthetically and functionally problematic locations in the campus core.” A solution ought to suggest alternatives to an exile of all vehicles to an over-large parking lot on the east side of Route 32.
Nothing suggested in this site and landscape plan should be construed as the final word on anything. Though a step forward toward a major discussion of how to improve the look and feel of the New Paltz campus, the study will be scrutinized carefully in both New Paltz and Albany.
The danger of its recommendations actually happening are probably less than the dangers of them not happening. Budget support will have to be obtained, and SUNY Central will have to be lobbied.
If the situation is how it is described, what advantage was there to keeping the process as closed as it has been kept for the past several months? Let’s hope that force of habit was the sole reason.