New Dining Facilities & Campus Master Plan Incorporating Sustainability

By Jessica Sterrett
Rotunda ReporterAs the new dining facilities come into place, a greater aspect of sustainability within construction endeavors must be recognized. Not only has dining services been recognized for sustainability efforts, but so has Longwood's Facilities Management and Real Property Management Services. Their main focus is on improving the college environment.

Working alongside endeavors pertaining to sustainable construction are the campus police. Longwood Police Chief Bob Beach, as well as other officers, meets with Facilities Management and Real Property Management often to give input on safety and precaution issues that will best compliment the community and pedestrian atmosphere. "We lay down rules and regulations, and then we set up a thing of communication between us so that when they have some issues come up they let us know. They try to work so they give us 48 hour notice if they are going to disrupt something, so we can have enough time to set up and let the community know," said Beach.

Beach said a plan has to be in order to successfully expand and grow into an effective sustainable environment. "Every construction project has issues that come up. There's conflicts all of the time, what we have to do is we have to manage obviously, the traffic and the parking issues, but we also have to manage the safety issues and so forth," said Beach. The subdivision of Facilities Management and Real Property Management in charge of the Campus Master Plan is labeled Capital Planning. "There's just a ton of work going on, if you go back and look at the capital plan, there's an eight-year timeline that's laid out there. So it will be a particular process," said Beach. Reed "Jerry" Jerome is the Campus Master Plan coordinator with capital planning and in charge of producing the Master Plan Power Point of all construction endeavors until 2020, which was approved by the Board of Visitors (BOV) in September 2008. This Power Point can be found on the Facilities Management and Real Property Management webpage link under 'Campus Master Plan.'

"This was a two year project, I was hired as the project coordinator, just to do this and it's looking at an enrollment of 5,600 undergraduates in the year 2020. Obviously, the library, dining hall, residence halls, and the student union are not big enough now, let alone for 5,600 [students],"said Jerome. In order to fit those requirements, "they are very much focused on trying to make it much more of a green campus; parking is spread out moved away, much more pedestrian friendly, a lot more green space," said Beach.

Jerome created four main sustainability goals. One focus is on water consumption and developing a water management policy. Second is reducing the amount of material flows, such as food and non-food waste. Third is focusing on the energy and carbon dioxide reduction to improve fuel efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. Lastly, Jerome focuses on the reduction of transportation issues by creating pedestrian pathways to residence facilities off-campus. All of these goals are just minor steps that have been taken toward complete or apparent sustainability. "So the University plans for this and has a master plan almost done that will tell the University what it needs, recommendations of where to build it and kind of how to get there," said Jerome.

Jerome, along with others in Capital Planning, has presented many construction projects to the BOV. Many of these, such as lighting certain areas of campus and creating pedestrian walkways, are currently the main focus of both on and off campus construction. "All of these things are lined up, as that proceeds, that walkway that leads to the Landings will fall into place. As to when and how that's going to be done; the exact timeline of that is, I don't know. I can tell you though that it is progressing. The lighting on Madison Street will come before any of the walkways come. That's moving along very quickly, I would expect by the summer all that lighting will be done, " said Beach.

One main walkway, according to Beach, to be built by the summer will connect from campus and run to Lancer Park so that students no longer have to take the bus, and can safely walk home from campus. Junior Sanni Merk, a Lancer Park resident, feels a walkway would be a great idea, as long as it's sustainable. "I don't like construction, I wouldn't like a sidewalk down the street, but if they made the walkway like a nature trail; without harming nature that would be all right," said Merk. Merk currently feels she can walk back safely during the day if she misses the bus, but at night it can be very dangerous with oncoming cars driving right where people walk to get home.

"I think we're progressing along ok, I just don't know that anybody knows what the budget costs of this is going to be. And what the gist of the overall money issues are going to be like for our country in the next two or three years," said Beach. As of right now, all approved construction projects have been funded, but the answer of when they will be completed is another subject.

Jerome has not yet completed the full Campus Master Plan of construction projects expected be completed by 2020. When that is completed, steps to create the product will be another long step-by-step process. "The end product will be, a report and about a ten minute video that has animations that will show a three-dimensional campus of former buildings going away and new buildings coming up and if the website will sustain it, we're going to put the hard copy report and the video on the website, so people can actually see it," said Jerome. The only issue presented is whether or not 2020 will be the completion of construction date as planned.