Campus master planning enters a new phase

On Friday, February 27, members of the Executive and Buildings and Grounds committees of Kenyon's Board of Trustees had their first opportunity to see the first draft of the College's new campus master plan. The plan, the first in a decade, will proceed to the full board in April.

Last spring, the board set forth five principles to guide the effort. These were (1) that Kenyon's is a walking campus; (2) that the center of the Village of Gambier be addressed; (3) that all academic facilities on campus be located in the academic core of the campus; (4) that the integrity of the community be sustained and strengthened; and (5) that green spaces on campus be preserved and created.

Chosen to undertake the project was the firm of Graham Gund Architects (GGA), the Cambridge, Massachusetts, practice led by Graham Gund '63. The College officers charged with coordinating consultation about the effort with Kenyon's various constituencies were Provost Gregory Spaid, Vice President for Development Kimberlee Klesner, and Vice President for Finance Joseph Nelson.

The College hosted a series of meetings with campus and village groups during visits to the campus by Gund and his associate Youngmin Jahan in September and November. In all, there were twenty-eight meetings and other events, attended by several hundred village citizens, including members of the administration, faculty, staff, and student body.

A number of messages came through loud and clear in the meetings, several of which were open to the community. Among these were the deep fondness many faculty members and students feel for the former faculty homes in which several departments are housed; the desire to locate the art department closer to the hub of other academic activity on campus; the need to address issues of accessibility; the concern for preserving the livelihoods of village merchants while enlivening commerce in the village; and the fervent hope that Kenyon will do its best to maintain existing green spaces and create new ones, in accordance with the fifth principle.

Because the plan will address College properties in Gambier's business district, village merchants were consulted during the fact-and-opinion-gathering phase, as were others with a stake in the plan, including the volunteer fire department and the village's Planning and Zoning Commission.

In early February, President S. Georgia Nugent, Klesner, and Spaid traveled to Cambridge to review GGA's draft plan and offer their comments before the presentation to the trustee committees. "Graham Gund and Youngmin Jahan have done a very good job of responding to what they heard at the many meetings they attended in Gambier with various groups from Kenyon and the village," says Spaid. "In particular, they heard what the faculty said about the future academic needs of the College, and they have responded with plans that respect the close and productive interaction between teacher and student that we enjoy at Kenyon."

Here are some of the master plan's highlights, organized around the five principles.

*The walking campus. This principle has been addressed in the plan with changes that will make students' commuting time between residence halls and other campus facilities shorter than the commuting time to their cars. The plan calls for bringing some housing in from the campus outskirts and moving some parking lots out, while paying close attention to issues of accessibility and safety.

*The village center. The plan suggests keeping all the businesses currently on Gaskin and Chase avenues on Gaskin or Chase and providing opportunities for those currently on side streets to move onto one of the main streets if they desire. It also calls for preservation of a gas and service station in the current location. In addition, the plan suggests improvements to Scott Lane, including the construction of student housing in the area, possibly in town-house-style units, and the relocation of administrative offices with high volumes of student traffic to the village center. Although most of the existing buildings in the area would remain, including those now housing the College Relations Division, a significant redesign of Farr Hall is recommended. A proposed addition to the Kenyon Inn would allow for access to the dining room from Chase Avenue.

*The academic core. The Department of Art would get a new home south of Wiggin Street according to the plan, and no departments would be moved north of Brooklyn Street. All the existing houses used for academic purposes would be preserved, although some might be moved to other sites on campus. (There are many precedents for this in the College's history.) The area to the west of Chalmers Memorial Library would be redesigned as a new quadrangle, with buildings of modest size for academic and administrative purposes. Recommendations for changes to Ascension and Ransom halls to improve accessibility would likely mean the displacement of some offices from those buildings into these new facilities.

*The integrity of the community. "The planners were extremely grateful that merchants, village officials, and community residents provided so much input to the process," says Klesner. "The plan now being developed calls for pursuing several initiatives that came out of these discussions, and these will be discussed further with the appropriate parties."

*Green spaces. The plan focuses not only on preserving key green spaces (such as the lawn between Ransom and Ascension halls) but also on creating new ones, especially in areas currently marred by pavement or poor land use. The plan suggests eliminating a number of small parking lots, reconfiguring others, and redesigning the area behind the library, as mentioned above.

"What Graham Gund Architects has developed is a series of suggested developments in the physical plan of the College that is sensitive to campus needs, responsive to what community members conveyed during the planning process, rationally attractive, and aesthetically appealing," says Nugent. "The challenge for the trustees and the Kenyon community now, going forward, will be to consider this physical plan in the context of the overall objectives of the College. I feel particularly pleased by the master-planning process, because I believe no one could have had a better understanding of Kenyon or a greater engagement in its future than the GGA team. Now, as is the nature of master planning, the College itself will need to set priorities for Kenyon's multiple needs and goals, and to integrate the suggestions of the master plan into these priorities."

In the weeks to come, the campus master plan presented last week will be thoroughly reviewed and revised before its presentation to the full board for its approval in late April. After the plan has been accepted by the trustees, it will be made available to the community.

Nugent notes that it is important to remember that the final document is a plan rather than a prescription. She harks back to a statement she made last May: "This is what master planning is about, not a set of decisions, but a creative vision of the future."