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Monday, March 20, 2006
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As European universities continue… …to stew in their own juices, you’ve got your typical American university success story boiling away right here in UD’s dull, drab, Foggy Bottom. Dull, drab? Well, Bob Peck, a high-profile businessman, says it’s "lagging in vitality" around here, and that‘s why we need Square 54 to be developed on campus -- to wake the place up. Square 54, you recall, is a terrifically valuable piece of property (smack in the middle of FB; hop skip and a jump to a metro stop; jest keep on a spell down the road to get to the White House…) -- In fact, Last year, the university commissioned the Urban Land Institute to study the development potential for the Square 54 site. ULI concluded the site is "far too valuable for anything less than a signature project." So, the deal is that the site is too valuable for a mere university to use it for university purposes (note that Square 54’s multiple proposed uses include no classrooms or labs or anything like that), so instead of doing the natural thing and taking advantage of all that high-profile, well-located space for academic functions, GW will sell or lease it to wealthy residents and law firms (the heart goes pitter-pat at the thought of the urban vitality these groups will bring). Then, in part with the money from Le Big Deal (the name of a wretched French tv show UD‘s kid loved to watch when they lived there), the university will stretch its rather small urban space in other places on campus -- arguably beyond reasonable limits -- to keep growing students, buildings, and parking lots, thus pissing off the locals. Such an American tale. At the University of Toulouse, where UD once taught, and where the students get huffy and shut the place down for some reason or another almost every semester (they’re having a real field day at the moment), students would respond to GW’s bottom-line machinations by barricading the campus, taking over the president’s office, hurling computers out of windows, and beheading a bust of George Washington. But in this country everyone accepts that a university would sell a vast prime piece of its own space to the highest bidder and at the same time insist on growing, growing, growing - growing its student population, off-campus programs, secondary campuses (GW’s got two), other real estate holdings, etc. See if you can detect the Washington Business Journal’s position on the matter from its article, starting with its description of the opposing neighborhood group as “well-funded” -- as well it might be, but what about GW and other interested parties? Why doesn’t the article tell us if they’re well-funded? UD thinks they are. UD thinks they’re better-funded than the neighborhood group. GW has asked the city to ease the density restrictions on its campus to allow for more student housing, offices and classroom buildings. If the zoning commission denies the university's density request, GW would have to look at using its valuable Square 54 site for university-related uses. Would have to look! How degrading an exigency! A valuable commercial site is a terrible thing to waste! Here’s Bob Peck again! “It's 2.5 acres -- hello? -- on Pennsylvania Avenue and next to a Metro.” It’s 2.5 acres -- hello? -- on a university campus. The article’s final paragraph makes clear what Proper Thinking on this one would be: In recent years, the university has been under pressure to grow revenue based on additional tuition dollars, which translates into increased enrollment -- exactly what the neighborhood is opposed to. By developing Square 54 to its full potential -- and leasing it for 60 years to Boston Properties and KSI -- GW would generate a funding stream that could alleviate tuition-based revenue pressure and slow the influx of new students. Unmentioned are the two other underutilized campuses GW owns, one of which, in a verdant affluent DC location, already takes some of the pressure off of Foggy Bottom. |