Master Plan completion has been moved back to at least the Fall Semester.
The university will release new questions today on masterplan.bsu.edu.
The academic master plan will greatly influence the campus master plan.
The campus master plan will not be complete until next year, and one consultant said there is “still a lot to be done.”
The original goal was to complete the plan by the end of this academic year, but consulting firm SmithGroupJJR said it will work over the summer to complete the recommendations and come back to campus one more time in the fall.
“Our hope is to have direction far enough along to garner strong input before the end of this semester,” consultant Michael Johnson said. “A lot of refinement is happening.”
Gregory Graham, a university architect, said pushing the plan back isn’t necessarily a setback.
“It will always be an evolving plan,” he said.
Masterplan.bsu.edu will host new questions today regarding student’s ideas about specific space use, like where they meet to collaborate with professors and how far they are willing to walk from parking to campus.
“We are looking for continued refinement,” Johnson said. “Our hope is rather than casting a broad net, we are asking clarifying questions about ideas that have been discussed to get further clarity as we angle toward [the] refinement stage.”
SmithGroupJJR consultants visited campus last week to share original ideas from the plan.
The plan will address McKinley Avenue, the Quad and physical classrooms, and the group has identified a specific plan for each area.
Graham said because McKinley Avenue gets traffic from cars, buses, trucks, bicycles and pedestrians, adding parallel bike lanes near the Cow Path and accompanying bike storage is an option for the future.
He said current open spaces like the Quad can be enhanced to connect other existing open spaces.
“Right now, there is disjointedness from [the] old Quad to newer Quad areas,” Graham said.
Johnson said the academic master plan influences the campus master plan 100 percent. The academic master plan also is currently in development.
“We’re working side by side with that team,” he said. “They are helping us to determine what physical implications come out of academic goals.”
Graham said the data analysis revealed a deficit in lab space classrooms, an example of something the university may address in the future if the areas of science, technology, engineering and medicine take a larger role in the academic plan.
Johnson said the consulting firm wants to connect the campus plan to the academic plan with classroom space that “better meets needs of 21st century learning.”
Graham said the consultants will make preliminary presentations to the Board of Trustees in the near future.
He stressed the importance of the plan’s ability to be flexible based on future needs, economics and direction.
Graham said it is hard to define exactly when projects are likely to happen when planning so far into the future.
“[The] further you get out, it becomes cloudier,” Graham said.
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