School Won’t Expand Borders

By Ray Gronberg, The Herald-Sun, Durham, N.C.

Mar. 14–DURHAM — Planners are going to have a hard time squeezing more than 200,000 square feet of additional dormitory and classroom space onto the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics campus, but they’ll do it without the school acquiring more property.

Speaking to community leaders on Thursday, Science and Math Chancellor Gerald Boarman firmly ruled out any move by the school to buy neighboring homes or land in the Watts Hospital-Hillandale neighborhood.

“With this master plan, we’re not going to expand the borders we have,” Boarman said. “I’m happy to commit to that and happy to say that. What that means is we also are not going to spoil the historic look of this institution, nor are we going to undo the good will we’ve worked so hard to create in this community.”

Boarman also ruled out any move to place new buildings on the perimeter of the school’s Club Boulevard property, or on land on the north side of campus now occupied by the school’s soccer and baseball fields.

Furthermore, he said that despite the constraints of the current site, school leaders would not consider moving the facility, a state-run boarding school for 11th and 12th graders.

“During my tenure, that’s not on the table,” he said.

The constraints Boarman has placed on the $70 million expansion mean that the only place planners from the Baltimore architectural firm the school hired to lay it out can use is the center of the existing campus.

They’ll have to find a way to shoehorn them into the area between the school’s four main buildings, the old Watts Hospital, the Bryan Center and the Hunt Residence Hall.

Architects from that firm, Ayers Saint Gross, say it’ll be tough but are optimistic about their chances of succeeding.

“This is a really complex program,” said Matt Poe, one of the firm’s principals and the man who’s spearheading its work. “It’s as big as a big university, just on a small scale.”

Science and Math officials picked Ayers Saint Gross partly because the firm is skilled at finding ways to fit new facilities into tight or unusual places. Its signature projects include a campus master plan for UNC Chapel Hill that fitted millions of square feet of new construction, including a new student center, into a 214-year-old campus.

Poe indicated that its approach to Science and Math would be at least somewhat similar to how it handled the Chapel Hill project. The firm has started by examining the condition of the existing buildings on the site, and is likely to recommend major renovations to some.

Many of the school’s existing classrooms are undersized, but its dormitories need the most work, Poe said.

The existing buildings provide about 411,000 square feet of floor space. The added space the school needs, among other things, would enable a 260-student expansion of its enrollment planned in 2011 or 2012, Poe said.

Neighbors were pleased that Boarman ruled out property acquisitions, but said they’d like to see drawings of what Ayers Saint Gross suggests as soon as possible. Firm and school officials hope a plan is ready for Science and Math trustees to review in September.

The school also is likely to need a rezoning from the city. Its property is now zoned only for residential development. It can’t apply for the sort of “university/college” zoning the city has applied to Duke University because the site is too small for the buffers that that zoning requires, local architect George Stanziale said.

Boarman said he ruled out property acquisitions because he doesn’t want Science and Math to get embroiled in the kind of controversy officials at N.C. Central University sparked by floating a draft master plan that called for buying up adjoining homes.

“You see what’s happening at Central and the ill will that’s causing and how people’s lives are shattered,” he said.

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Copyright (c) 2008, The Herald-Sun, Durham, N.C.

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