Joint West Campus Area Committee Meeting

Joint West Campus Area Committee Meeting

September 26, 2007

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Campus Drive Bike and Pedestrian path - project is in construction. Some delays are occurring based on issues working around an existing sanitary sewer near Walnut Street. Still hope to have asphalt laid before the plants close this fall.

Great Lakes Bio-Energy Facility - several sites still under discussion with CALS and university administration. The Forest Products Lab is also considering a facility on their property west of WARF that could be a joint Bio-fuels plant.

Athletics Master Plan - the draft plan has been presented to the Regent Neighborhood Association and to the Athletic Board publicly. Details of the final plan will be out later this fall. All proposed projects will continue to come through this committee as they are designed and developed well into the future.

Randall/Dayton utilities are in preliminary planning. Starting discussions to coordinate with the city and Madison Gas & Electric

Biochemistry II - Action Item

Mitchell Fox from Flad Associates presented the current plans for the Bio-Chemistry II project. Overall, the project will have 245,000 gross square feet which is not only an addition but a significant renovation of existing historic buildings. Site is bounded by University Avenue on the south, Henry Mall on the east, the 1998 Biochemistry building on the west and Bock Labs on the north. The 1912 Biochemistry building is on the National Register of Historic Places individually and as part of the Henry Mall historic district. The original 1912 building wing had an addition put on in 1937. In 1956, another addition was added with a single story seminar and vivarium space to the north and west. Another addition was built to the north in 1985 which is connected to the 1956 wing. In 1998, Flad designed the Bio-Chemistry I project west of the 1912/37 building. With this new project, the 1956 building will be removed in its entirety and renovations will be made to the 1912/1937 buildings as well as the adjacent Ag Journalism building.

The John Steuart Curry murals in the 1937 building will be saved and restored as part of the overall project. Curry was the artist in residence at the university at the time, actually one of the first artists in residence in the country.

The building is being designed to be light and airy as opposed to a more heavily grounded building. It needs to sit within the context of all the other existing buildings that will remain. The Wisconsin Historical Society has also been involved in the discussion and agrees that the new building should be different enough from the existing and act more as a soft backdrop to the historic buildings on Henry Mall.

A new pedestrian mall has been opened up east-west as a public space harkening back to the 1908 Campus Master Plan by Laird & Cret. The mall opens up the site for easier pedestrian travel both east-west and north-south around the 1912/37 building. Henry Mall will be preserved and restored to meet the overall goals of the campus master plan. Limited traffic on Henry Mall is also sought such that the existing service traffic access point on the mall will be moved behind the buildings to the west of Bock Labs. A new service access drive will come in off of Linden Drive from the north.

The new tower will be mostly a research facility with the older 1912/1937 being the instructional facility with more classrooms, essentially being a more public building. Ag Journalism will house more administrative functions and a café on the lower level that spills out into a south facing courtyard. Terracotta panels will be used on the exterior of the building in a panelized system along with a series of terracotta baguettes that act as sun screens on the building, laid in a linear fashion. An overhead pedestrian connection will connect the new tower with the older buildings at the second floor. This crosses above the new east-west pedestrian mall. Heat recovery units are included on the roof of the building which helps from a sustainability standpoint.

Mark V. asked about the difference in new to old space. What is the net gain of space with the new building?

Sherwood M. asked about noise impacts about the terracotta and if weather impacts the material from a sound standpoint. He also asked about the vivarium for building. What are the projections for cross discipline use with the WID/MIR project? The vivaria will be separate with researchers in each building using their respective vivarium spaces. There will be no cross moving of animals from one building to the other.

Mark Shahan asked about the new entrance off Linden Drive and the pedestrian vehicular separations. A standard curb will be implemented. He further noted that bicycle parking is also important and asked how many will be on the site. A total of 160 bike parking space will be provided around the site which is about a 10% increase over the existing number of spaces. He has some concerns about making sure bike parking is visible enough for the users.

I,Michael Nemmetz, asked about the status of the architectural design. He thought that the new building doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the new and existing buildings in the area. Consensus from the university and the historical society was that the building should be more of a backdrop building rather than something that mimics the existing architecture, especially if it was all in brick. The project is also trying to do as much day-lighting as possible in the new building. Michael also felt that the windows were being too covered by the building materials.

Liz V. asked if the new building could be more like the 1998 building which everyone seems to like. Actually, many of the pieces and rhythm of the new building are from the 1998 building. Flad designed both the 1998 building and the new building architecture, in fact, the same architect, David Black, has been involved.