The issues raised in the news analysis "Seeing double: Facilities plans may overlap" (DP, 11/15/96) and the editorial "Long-awaited overall overhaul" (DP, 11/15/96), and in the editorial "First priority: Academics" (DP, 11/18/96), are important and your readers deserve some clarification. At last Wednesday's University Council meeting, I brought the campus community up-to-date on the expansive and fresh thinking taking place about the quality of campus facilities, the condition of student residences, recreational opportunities and retail amenities in the area surrounding campus. More important, though, was my emphasis on the principles and goals that underlie the planning process: · A vibrant, attractive and safe campus; · Control over strategic properties in the areas surrounding campus and the highest and best use of our existing real estate; · Facilities that support the academic initiatives articulated in the "Agenda for Excellence," our strategic plan; · Contemporary high-quality student residences; · Greatly expanded recreational and retail opportunities for the campus community; · And robust economic development to support community revitalization. These build on the master planning principles articulated in 1992 by Venturi, Scott Brown. I said, too, with great emphasis and diagrams that we will expand to the east and south of campus, and that we will work with the community to enhance areas north and west of the campus. There is, I said, a great deal of difference between the words "expand" and "enhance." My comments to Council stressed that in a resource-scarce environment, our campus and its facilities absolutely must serve and advance our most critical teaching and research missions. Where they do not, we must be prepared to challenge assumptions and prepare plans for investments or reinvestments that realign our physical assets with the "Agenda for Excellence." Space planning and academic planning are not in competition. They must go together. I also pointed out to those at the Council meeting that some of the planning on these issues is well-advanced, and well it should be. We will, for example, open an exciting new bookstore complex with mixed-use features that will revitalize the 36th and Walnut streets site that is presently a parking lot. We have also made several strategic real estate acquisitions that will shape campus expansion over the next 50 years. And we are accelerating our efforts to work with our good neighbors west of campus to ensure that West Philadelphia is a stable, exciting community of homeowners and responsible tenants for decades to come. Clearly, too, some planning is preliminary. We do not have firm plans, for example, for renovation of student residences or construction of new residential facilities on campus. Do we know where we have problems? Yes, and I identified several in my remarks to Council, but as I said, we will wait for the results of the Biddison-Hier study before we make those decisions. Indeed, the text of your coverage of my remarks to Council refutes its own premise that there may be potential conflict between our residential work to date and the Biddison-Hier study. As your reports stated in several places, I spoke about "potential" plans to build new dormitories. I said renovations "may" target the grad towers, the Quad and Stouffer. Again, we must wait for the results of the Biddison-Hier study before we make decisions. That is why we hired them. I did not, nor would I, ever suggest that the heart of the campus would move away from Perelman Quad. When this beautiful student complex is completed, the heart of the campus will be wonderfully obvious to all of us. Sansom Commons will not conflict with the Perelman complex. Instead, new retail and restaurant developments on Sansom Street will complement Perelman and add luster to the central core of the campus. That is why they are being master-planned together. But perhaps most troubling for me were your editorials, which posed a false choice between "aesthetics" and "academics" at Penn. Nothing could be further from my mind or from the plans of the Board of Trustees. We must seek excellence in all that we do here -- certainly in our academic programs and the facilities that support those programs, as well as in facilities that house us, provide important student services, serve the faculty and provide recreational opportunities. There is much to accomplish, but we will. This is an exciting time at Penn. And, we will continue to consult broadly with the campus community and report on our progress.
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