Alright, so the following are some rough notes I took from tonight's Northeastern University Task Force meeting (organized by the BRA, hosted at NU Alumni Center).
- The new NU Task Force members introduced themselves (a couple NU alumni, mostly civic association, neighborhood alliance, and former task force members in the new group, as well as a rep from NEC. My friend and I were a little disappointed there were no current NU students represented on the NU Task Force, chiefly because they would be the direct beneficiaries/users of anything discussed in a master plan).
NU vice presidents/leadership start talking
- The NU Institutional Master Plan presentation concentrated on NU in 2023. In 11 years, they see the school as a powerful global education model and a Top 50 ranked national university.
- Talked about goals for the century, including a strong sense of community, engagement, and affinity.
- 2023: make Boston a flagship campus offering PhD programs, high quality residential undergraduate program, regional campuses for graduate education (*Charlotte campus and later a Seattle campus... among others), global provider of online education.
- "Urban campus: a Footprint, But No Wall". open character, unique beautiful space, and chiefly an open campus. "What is the perception of our campus to our neighbors?" NU wants to complement the city's assets surrounding campus (Symphony, Jordan Hall, MFA, etc.). Invite the outside world onto our campus, as well as alumni, clinical patients/subjects, guests at performances.
Planning firm begins talking
- Chief planner is actually a Boston resident since 1975 (JP).
- He showed an aerial pic of NU in 1969, then compared to 2012... MASSIVE difference (as anyone on here knows). Parking and poor use of space --> massive residential campus.
- Then they showed an interesting set of slides that highlighted the decades in which NU buildings were constructed, both academic and non-academic. A very small ratio of space at NU is for academic use.
- Most useful slide of the night: a bar graph comparing square footage added to campus by use between 1998-2011, and then the proposal/goal uses from between 2012-2023.
~Between 98-11, about 2.2 million square feet of new space was added to campus. Roughly 90% of that was for residence halls/housing.
~In the IMP goal for 12-23, they're thinking 3.0 million square feet of new space to add. 2.0 million square feet is proposed for academic/research space, about 400,000 square feet for new residence hall(s), about 250,000 square feet for event/student experience space, 100,000+ square feet for athletic uses, and 100,000 square feet for support/service buildings
GOALS:
- Improve Huntington Avenue presence and experience (they explicitly showed Cabot Center having a negative presence on the Huntington pedestrian experience... AGREED).
- "Columbus Avenue is every bit as important as Huntington Avenue," and they'd like to treat it that way and contribute to both avenues' improvements. These are the major east-west corridors running through campus, they'd like to connect these two corridors through the campus and bridge the physical and psychological barrier between the two: the MBTA Orange Line and Amtrak corridor cutting through campus.
- They showed a slide with 5 or 6 very wide/large decks (you read that correctly, DECKS) over the orange line connecting south campus with everything else. (THEY TOTALLY LISTENED TO THE STUDENTS!!!).
- They want to put mixed uses on the Columbus Lot, add an athletics village/athletic facilities next to the Matthews Arena, concentrate science buildings around the existing sciences quad, engineering buildings around the existing engineering centers, and (best of all) a cultural mixed-use center where the existing Cabot athletic facility is on campus (intersection of Forsyth and Huntington). They acknowledged that the Columbus lot offers the most opportunity for development/growth (sounds like west village all over again).
- One of their major goals is how to take advantage of surface parking lots on campus for IMP development... stay in existing footprint and only go into surrounding parcels (P-3?) once NU has reached build-out. They really want the Gainsborough/St. Botolph area of campus to be the concentration of athletic facilities, both outdoor and indoor within easy walking distance from campus.
- "Possibilities for growth: selective expansion (with partners) toward lower Roxbury (mainly for office space, or so it sounded). NU wants to focus on its main campus though.
Then there was a little official BRA/Task Force talk, a Q&A among the force, and--finally--no shortage of drama from a fair share of community members. When it was recommended that the NU Task Force members should start their next meeting (on May 17th) with a 30-minute to 1-hour campus tour of Northeastern's campus, I spoke up and volunteered to give a campus to the whole task force and also urged them to take it on foot as oppose to a bus ride around the school (which was proposed, seriously) so they can get a very thorough, accurate look at NU's campus. I genuinely encourage them to accept my offer; they'd be really, really careless not to. But I digress...
The ultimate mood of the room was like every other NU task force meeting I've been to: the same curmudgeons complaining about campus development, impatient people who do not understand the community meeting process and verbally bash everyone organizing it, and then (thankfully) the sane people raising useful/important concerns about the IMP moving forward in the next few weeks.
I personally just wanted to share, for the record, that I attended the student Q&A portion of this IMP process a couple months ago where the planners and the school received feedback from about 100 students about all areas the campus can improve on. And with what was presented at tonight's meeting, I applaud the planners for actually addressing every single concern and campus inclusion that students recommended that night. I only wish I could've publicly noted this at the meeting, but we ran out of time. I'll be at the next meeting, though, so until then.