The neighbors are mobilizing against it—they’ve even organized a monetary campaign to defeat it—but where is the 2010 Campus Plan, exactly?

Well, although administrators said throughout the November draft presentation process that they were aiming to submit a final plan to the D.C. Zoning Commission by early February at the latest, the plan is still before the University steering committee.

University Spokesperson Andy Pino, without saying when the final plan will be done or what has caused the delay—”the process of developing the 10-year campus plan takes some time,” he said—wrote in an e-mail that the Campus Plan said that the Campus Plan was still being worked on, and it will go before the neighbors one more time when it’s done:

“The 2010 Campus Plan steering committee is in the process of finalizing our campus plan, and they expect to hold another community-wide meeting prior to filing the plan with the Zoning Commission.”

Stay tuned!

A while back, a Vox Populi post saw a rash of upset comments about the Georgetown University Hospital’s role in the 2010 Campus Plan. Specifically, a Vox reader noticed that in the open letter Citizens’ Association of Georgetown President Jennifer Altemus (COL ‘88) had sent to University President John DeGioia outlining the community’s concerns about the proposed Ten Year Plan, she had made this suggestion regarding the Georgetown University Hospital:

“Relocating the hospital to another site on the University campus accessed from Canal Road would avoid these objectionable impacts and also create a large space for the construction of new student housing.”

Subsequent student commenters were not pleased, and responses ranged from this:

“What an idiot. She actually suggesting moving the hospital? I had thought the association was comprised of slightly cranky but generally reasonable non-student residents, but not actual extremists. The author is a true fool.”

To this:

“Jennifer Altemus deserves every bad thing that ever happens to her in her life.”

But Altemus’s suggestion that the University move the Hospital did not come out of nowhere. Vox is guessing that her comments derive from the fact that plans to build an entirely new Hospital facility really are part of Georgetown’s 2010 Campus Plan. Only, construction of a new facility isn’t going to free up any room for more student housing, because the current Hospital facilities don’t seem to be going anywhere.

Read more after the jump, plus some seriously nasty e-mails between a Georgetown alum and the CAG Vice President about the Hospital

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We’ve been speculating about whether or not the 2010 Campus Plan would be hampered by the kind of neighborhood opposition that beset the 2000 Campus Plan. We can stop wondering now. Georgetown alum and CAG President Jennifer Altemus (COL ‘88) has announced that the Citizens’ Association of Georgetown is launching a campaign against the Campus Plan—and it’s not just an advocacy campaign.

“[I]t is clear that we will need support from experts to enhance our efforts in advocating the needs and concerns of the residential community,” Altemus wrote in an e-mail that went out over the Georgetownforum listserv. “To that end, we are asking you to help us fund this important effort.”

She goes on to ask residents to visit the CAG website and donate to the “Save Our Neighborhood” fund, where suggested donations start at $300 and go up to $5,000. Or neighbors can make a (tax-deductible) donation of any amount. In either case, they’ll receive an invitation to the “Save Our Neighborhood” cocktail party at Georgetown restaurant il Canale.

She also announced an April meeting among neighbors to discuss the 2010 Campus Plan specifically from the neighbors’ point of view.

Members of the CAG and the Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners have made no secret of how much they dislike Georgetown’s 2010 Campus Plan. Even at a community meeting where Georgetown administrators more or less promised that they were rerouting the GUTS buses according to the ANC’s wishes, ANC Commissioner Ron Lewis openly threatened to impede the plan’s passage if Georgetown did not acquiesce to more neighborhood demands.

“There is a problem,” he said. “And the problem is that people who come to your classes are jamming up our streets by parking. It’s not our role, it’s not our job to figure out the solution—it’s the University’s. But there is the problem. And unless the problem goes away, it’s going to be a problem for the plan.”

I guess those problems start now. Read Altemus’ full letter after the jump.

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On Friday afternoon, Georgetown University President John DeGioia sat down with student reporters from the Voice and The Hoya to answer a range of questions about Georgetown, including the Ten Year Plan, the goals of the school’s $1.5 billion Capital Campaign, the progress of the Diversity Working Groups, and football.

Below is a full transcript of DeGioia’s interview, painstakingly transcribed by the Voice’s Cole Stangler, our man at the meeting.

The highlights? In response to The Hoya’s April Fools’ Issue and the recent Heckler incident, Vice President for Student Affairs Todd Olson’s office is going to conduct a “satire and civility” workshop.

The University has raised $580 million so far in its Capital Campaign. Georgetown’s science center will cost $98 million to complete and its target date for completion is Fall 2012.

Voice: How do you view our relationship right now with the neighborhood? I know a lot of students seem to be frustrated about the extent to which the University has entertained neighborhood input with some aspects of the Ten Year Plan—like rerouting the GUTS bus through the Canal Street entrance. How would you respond to students who feel that the University has made concessions to residents that harm University life?

DeGioia: Well, it’s always a very difficult balancing act to try to recognize and understand the needs of the community with what it will take for us to be able to be successful in our mission. And so the work of the master plan is generally ongoing on all the time. It’s not like it’s something that we begin in the months leading up to the need to have it approved.

It’s truly a ten-year effort. We’re always at it and we’re always engaged with our neighbors in trying to understand their needs and their concerns. At the same time, we frustrate them. If a neighborhood were sitting here, they’d be using the same language. So we’re always trying to get the right balance. I believe what you’re seeing right now are a range of ideas and proposals that have been on the table that we are considering in one form or another, but it very much is a work in progress.

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Wingardium leviosa!

The impending scuffle over the 2010 Campus Plan has the residents of Georgetown chatting about how to keep the University from creeping into their neighborhood. Last week, local leader Jennifer Altemus (COL ‘88) announced over the georgetowforum listserv that she had sent President John DeGioia a letter outlining their concerns with the 2010 Campus Plan.

More recently, a man who identified himself as a graduate of the Georgetown Medical School kicked off a curious debate about the prospect of moving the Medical School. Vox was pretty surprised at some of the suggestions neighbors made in response to the his e-mail, particularly those from a resident who we’ll identify by his initials, “RR”:

[RR]: “if the University moved the Medical School next to the Law School and the owner of the hospital moved it to North Capitol next to Gonzaga College HS, we wouldn’t have these growth problems into the neighborhoods and campus housing would be on site.”

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If you don’t recall how neighborhood residents of Georgetown reacted when administrators presented the 2010 Campus Plan back in November, let me remind you of the words of Advisory Neighborhood Commission Chair Ron Lewis when he heard that adding 1,000 parking spaces in the University was part of the plan:

“There is a problem,” he said. “And the problem is that people who come to your classes are jamming up our streets by parking. It’s not our role, it’s not our job to figure out the solution—it’s the University’s. But there is the problem. And unless the problem goes away, it’s going to be a problem for the plan.”

And that was at the meeting where Georgetown said it was definitely rerouting GUTS buses through Canal Street, which the ANC has been demanding for years.

Now, as the end of January nears—at which point Georgetown administrators have said they hope to submit the Plan to the ANC for its first stage of review—neighbors are no less content than they were in November about the proposed 2010 Campus Plan.

Jennifer Altemus (COL ‘88), the president of the Citizens Association of Georgetown, sent a dense letter to President John DeGioia last Thursday which she provided to the Voice. The letter enumerates the neighbors’ grievances with the current draft of the Campus Plan.

“We are extremely disappointed with the process thus far. It appears that community input at the GU sponsored meetings has been ignored,” she wrote. “This list is by no means comprehensive but these issues represent the priority concerns of the community that will be raised during the plan review and approval process.”

Read the full letter and a summary, after the jump.

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Print from the comfort of those cozy-looking chairs!

Shifting impatiently from one foot to another while the person in front of you uses the wrong Lau 3 printer to print a PDF may soon be a thing of the past.

The University plans to install wireless printing and additional printers in Blommer and Lauinger Libraries, according to GUSA Secretary of Academic Affairs Daphne Panayotatos (SFS `11), a member of the Faculty Library Advisory Committee that formed this past Spring. Printers will also be outfitted with duplex printing abilities as a green initiative.

“Plans are to have these measures in effect by the start of next semester,” Panayotatos wrote in an e-mail.

The FLAC, which consists of two undergraduate students, one graduate student, and faculty, was formed to suggest changes to the Library to be included in the 2010 Campus Plan.

An addition to Lauinger Library is included in the plan, and schematics from the draft plan show an addition over what is currently the parking lot, but Executive Assistant to the University Librarian Jessica Pierce and Panayotatos stress that currently, there are no definite plans to expand Lauinger.

When University officials spoke to neighbors in May and raised the possibility of building a new housing complex on the “1789 Block” (the area between Prospect and N Streets and 36th and 37th Streets), neighbors said they didn’t want to see undergraduates living in that area. So the University decided the new residences would be for grad students and faculty.  When officials at the May meeting said they were hoping to put 200 to 250 beds in the complex, neighbors said that would be too much density.  So the University lowered the projected number of beds to 120.

Even with the concessions, though, neighbors still aren’t enthusiastic about the proposal, which was presented Monday night by University Architect Alan Brangman.  While there were some quibbles about the specifics of the plan, most of the objections stem from one essential conflict: many neighbors don’t believe the land the University owns outside the front gates counts as “on campus;” University officials do.  And so does D.C.: Georgetown University’s legal boundaries, as defined by the the National Capital Planning Commission, include portions of four blocks West of the front gates.

“It’s a misnomer and it’s a deception,” one neighbor said of the University’s practice of defining the campus as including these areas beyond the front gates. “They [the students] are living amongst us!  They’re on the left of us, in the front of us, on the side of us, and they’re in the back of us … They’re not really within your gates, although you’re hiding behind the fact that [the boundaries were] approved.”

Brangman was having none of it, though.

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While University officials have been floating plans about student life and transportation over the past couple weeks, this week is the big unveiling of the full first draft of the plan.  The University will be holding three meetings with neighbors and one for students this week.

In preparation for the big week, the University put its 2010 Campus Plan presentation outline [PDF] online this weekend.  Here are some of the most interesting tidbits from the presentation:

• The slide on off-campus student life activities since the 2000 campus plan boasts that the University has implemented “stronger, swifter sanctions for violations of the Code of Conduct occurring in the community.”
• The University is planning on doubling the SNAP staff and “establish two Community Advisor positions in Burleith and West Georgetown.”
• The University is requesting the opportunity to increase graduate enrollment by more than 3,200 students, the majority of which would be in the Continuing Studies program
• Georgetown is hoping to add 480 employees
• Plans for the proposed Graduate/Faculty student housing on the 1789 block may involve the conversion of six houses on N Street currently used by undergraduates
• Facilities is considering a relocation from their current headquarters under Harbin to an “alternative location on the edge of campus”

With more details the plan coming to light, the Citizens’ Association of Georgetown is weighing in on the plan.  Like their peers in Burleith, CAG is less than psyched about the proposals.

CAG President Jennifer Altemus (COL ‘88) wrote in an e-mail to the Georgetown Forum listserv this weekend that she was not pleased with the fact that the University is not proposing any new undergraduate housing:

Currently there are 5,053 beds in what GU considers “on campus.”  111 of these beds are in the University owned townhouses.  The lack of on campus housing puts a huge strain on the community.  I am extremely disappointed with this aspect of their proposal.

To help with off campus issues they will add a second SNAP car to patrol on Thursday, Friday & Saturday nights.  And they plan to institute two Community Advisors who will be RAs for off campus students living amongst the students.  While this is a start, I do not believe it will offset the added burden of the growth in enrollment for an already saturated community.

You can read Altemus’ full e-mail after the jump…

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The proposed loop road and new GUTS routes

The last time University officials discussed the transportation aspect of the 2010 Campus Plan back in May, they said they were tentatively planning to send the Dupont GUTS bus through the Canal Road entrance, meaning the shuttle route would be extended to the experimental 4.7 mile test route permanently.  At last night’s meeting presenting the University’s first draft of its transportation plans, University officials made it clear that the rerouting isn’t just tentative—it’s now part of the University’s preferred draft plan.

Vice President for Facilities and Student Housing Karen Frank, who presented the University’s transportation plans to neighbors last night, explained that Georgetown would like to build a loop road on the west side of campus (as illustrated above) which would allow more buses to use the Canal Road entrance.

When the University requested the rights to build the Canal Road entrance in its last ten year plan it promised neighbors that the new entrance would be used for GUTS buses. Georgetown students, faculty and staff have been spared from the extended route thus far thanks to the fact that the current set-up of the parking lot near McDonough makes it nearly impossible for buses to turn around on campus.

The other problem is that between 6:15 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. on weekdays—prime rush hour time—drivers are not permitted to make left turns off of the Canal Road entrance.  If the University could get the left-turn prohibition lifted and build the loop road, all buses besides the Wisconsin Avenue route would be able to enter and exit through Canal Road.

The potential roadblock for the plan is the Park Service, which owns the land west of campus that abuts the proposed loop road.  While the road would be on GU property, the University has an agreement with the Park Service to only use that part of campus for service vehicles.  Frank said she is pushing for the definition of “service vehicles” to be any vehicle “dedicated to the University,” which would include GUTS buses.  However, Frank said, the Park Service is “not real easy to work with.”

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