Nora Strehl
Editor-in-Chief
East Campus advocates met for a campus town hall meeting yesterday, Wednesday, Feb. 1, to discuss Western Michigan University?s birthplace and its, now, more foreseeable future.
The meeting was organized by WMU?s Office of Community Outreach and the Western Student Association; as well as, Students for East Campus.
In attendance to provide the current status of the buildings were Jan Van Der Kley, WMU vice president for business and finance; Bob Miller, WMU associate vice president for community outreach and Randy Doran, senior vice president at KDC Real Estate Development and Investments, which is WMU?s private-sector development partner.
The Redevelopment Task Force, consisting of Co-Chairs Bob Miller, associate vice president of community outreach and David Dakin, director of campus facility planning, were joined by KDC, a real estate development and investments group and their two major partners: Urban Campus Communities (UCC) and Lodgco Management, as the private sectors onboard with the hopeful reconstruction of the landmarks.
Students, faculty and members of the community also sit on the task force and try to find alternative uses for East Campus properties, as well as work to find these financial partners willing to put money up to do it.
?UCC does housing in university communities, not necessarily student housing. Lodgco management does hospitality and convention center business,? Bob Miller said.
?These are all either based in or have a significant presence in the state of Michigan.?
General redevelopment plans for all of the East Campus quadrangle buildings have thus far been approved.
?East Hall would consist of a boutique hotel, conference center, health club and some parking arrangement, although that?s not been defined,? Miller said.
?North Hall would be residential apartments and or condominiums. West Hall would have apartments and or offices and professional offices in the Speech and Hearing building.?
Of course, the timing and details of initial construction had been awaiting the resolution of the Michigan Tax Credit legislation, which went into law in early December.
?One of the financing tools that the private sector looked at was the availability of tax credits from Brownfield Redevelopment, as well as historical tax credits for the renovation of historically significant buildings,? he added.
?Both Brownfield and historical tax credits in the state of Michigan, as we have known them, have gone away. The government and the legislature no longer offer them. There is a program that has just been passed and will replace that to a certain extent.?
At present, the Michigan Economic Development Corporations (MEDC) has approved the Michigan Business Development Program bill. When enacted, it will provide up to $10 million per project in grants, loans and other assistance. Projects are to revitalize urban areas, act as a catalyst for additional investment, reuse vacant or historical buildings and promote mixed use and sustainable development. The program was to begin in November, and would replace the State?s previous MEGA, Brownfield and Historic Tax Credit programs, according to a newsletter sent by Friends of Historic East Campus.
?At this point KDC, our development partner, is looking at their funding pro forma. They?re going to make an application to the state of Michigan to get a little bit of help. They?re looking at private development sectors,? Miller said.
?We wanted the private sector to take advantage of tools that the university does not, based on the whole concept of tax credits. The university is tax exempt ? we don?t pay taxes. So we can?t take advantage of tax credits, historical tax credits, Brownfield redevelopment tax credits (even when they did exist), or another tool called new market tax credits.?
It came down to WMU letting KDC use the buildings, for all intensive purposes at no charge, and letting them come up with a concept and financial model so that they could create a plan, which, in essence, would benefit both the university and the private sectors.
?We don?t have the money to do it ourselves, and it?s just not suitable for student programming,? Miller said.
?It would cost us, in terms of being responsible stewards of our students? tuition dollars and dollars from the state. We had to look at what is the most fiscally responsible way of spending those dollars.?
?We said we were going to try and be as accepting as possible of their ideas and basically said they couldn?t do anything that would be in conflict with the image of the university,? he added.
?But we didn?t say it had to be a university purpose. We did not require that.?
Miller said the goal of the Redevelopment Task force, as well as WMU, is to have the physical assets of East Campus preserved.
?Our goal is to preserve the buildings, and in some way have the birthplace of the university celebrated, recognized,? he said.
?So students are absolutely going to be able to spend time on East Campus once it?s been refurbished. There may be an opportunity ? let?s say if there is a boutique hotel and conference center ? for students to schedule meetings there, potentially, and to be able to walk through there and say ?This is where Western was founded and these buildings have been repurposed and they are beautiful once again.??
This is an extensive project, that in essence could take several years, but Miller said that in a large sense, to have the East Campus revitalized and refurbished at some level would be a wonderful thing for the community.
Although there still are many things to work through before the reconstruction can even happen, they at least have a development partner with whom they want to work.
?We do not have a formal development agreement with this group yet,? Miller said.
?We?re working on it. But what we have done is identified a partner with whom we want to move forward. We know that we like their ideas and we?re trying to figure out what the next steps are, They (KDC) are continuing to bring potential investors with their partnership to see those buildings and talk about concepts.?
A major aspect of the reconstruction, and one the task force was sure to remember, is that although a hefty task ? and to some degree a 10-, 20-, 30-year project ? Kalamazoo is a city filled with students and other community members alike who want to be involved in the revitalization.
?I can?t speak for the developers, but one thing that I do in my work, whenever the university partners with any external entity, is interject into the conversation that there will need to be an opportunity for our faculty and our students to be engaged at some level,? he said.
?Again, I am not speaking for the developers, but can tell you that there will be an opportunity for our students to get involved. I will look at ways for our various academic programs that could potentially align with the companies that are doing these projects, to get involved.?
Although the future of the buildings is a little less cloudy, there still are uncertainties.
?The completion of the buildings, as well as when we might begin construction ? I just do not know,? Miller added.
?One scenario might be that all of the buildings are being redeveloped at the same time, or they are being done one or two at a time. I don?t think that decision has been made yet. However, I can tell you that it is our intention that sometime by late winter or early spring, we will be able to announce what the next step is.?
Letting the buildings sit there for another 50 years is no longer feasible.
?The issue that remains is obtaining a financial pro forma that shows the project is financially viable,? said Jan Van Der Kley, WMU vice president for business and finance.
?The reason Western chose to work with a private developer is that the university needs to minimize any capital contribution to the project. In the past, Western has explored the feasibility of private donations for this project, and the evaluation has shown that the expected level of donations would not be sufficient for the project.?
Van Der Kley said in looking at the current use of East Campus, it serves primarily as the home for the Archives and Regional History Collections.
?The university is underway with a project to build a new facility for the archives and this project will begin late spring/early summer of 2012,? she said.
?Otherwise, the university has minimized its costs and has basically moth-balled the buildings to the greatest extent possible, while still providing building security.?
The fate of the buildings is still sitting in the hands of administration and the private sectors, but although it would probably be less expensive to demolish the buildings then to try and remodel them, Van Der Kley said there is no way WMU would completely destroy them all.
?Western has always had a strong interest in re-deploying East Campus, so we do not have any current estimates on demolishing the structures,? she said.
?Also, it would have been necessary to relocate the archives and this project was just approved this past December. Western has long believed that if it is possible to redeploy East Campus, then this is important for both Western and the community. We have actively looked at potential uses, as well as means of financing the reconstruction.?
Van Der Kley explained that East Campus has played a very integral role in Western?s history, but it had a long history within the community before it became Western property.
?We have always remained diligent in looking for an opportunity to repurpose East Campus,? she said.
Gregory Moorehead, Ph.D., is a 1989 graduate of Western Michigan University, member of Friends of Historic East Campus and former associate director of the WMU Alumni Association and, can remember a time when East Campus was a lively area.
?My best recollections were of North Hall, home to the Marketing Department and the College of Business Library. The entrance to the library was on the second floor, but the library also included these wonderfully dark, ?stacks,? which smelled of old books. The stacks ran for several levels, and sometimes you had to duck your head to miss the light fixtures, while on other levels there was easy clearance,? Moorehead said.
?Students today would be stunned at the level of energy found on the East Campus in that era. No one at that time talked about, nor thought about it being too far from the West Campus. In fact, I knew many students who only went to West Campus to buy books at the beginning of the term, and never set foot on that campus again until repeating the ritual the next term. Students parked their cars below the hillside on Davis, Walnut, Cedar and other nearby streets. Thus, the irony was that for a large number of students at that time, the West Campus seemed out of the way.?
Moorehead, now serving as the current director of student disability services at the University of Chicago, says that until he actually sees one or more of the historic hilltop structures restored, he doesn?t think WMU is being too proactive in preserving the landmark.
?We?ve heard the university say it?s cost prohibitive. Meanwhile, since the Business College left East Campus more than 20 years ago, WMU has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in construction on its campuses in Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Benton Harbor and Grand Rapids, all while the Historic East Campus continued to decay,? Moorehead said.
?We heard the university say that the East Campus is detached or remote from the West Campus, and therefore its utility is minimal. Now, with aviation students in Battle Creek, Engineering students on the Parkview Campus, and soon with medical students downtown, that excuse rings even more hollow.?
Restoring the physical and interior architecture is as important to Moorehead, as it seems to be for much of the administration.
?I know that the Friends of East Campus were represented on the Task Force, so that?s a good thing,? he said.
?The Task Force cannot be a ?rubber-stamp committee,? but must address preservation concerns in a serious manner. We realize that not every historical detail of each building can be preserved. However, we hope that we don?t end up with a product which looks like the Seeyle Center, where all that remains from the historic Oakland Gym is the fa?ade.?
?That?s not preservation, but rather a token gesture void of any serious consideration for how historic preservation retains irreplaceable craftsmanship, creates jobs, slows the development of open space, and reimages for the 21st century historic spaces where people work, play, study and create. Historic preservation is not just silly sentimentality; it?s good economic development,? Moorehead added.
Though East Campus has overlooked Kalamazoo for more than 100 years, it still has value to students today ? whether they know much about it or not.
Senior Tara Bell, president of Students For East Campus (SFEC), said she?s apprehensive about the redevelopments on East Campus.
?Redevelopment will bring new life to the buildings and will hopefully help link WMU to the downtown community,? Bell said.
?The apartments in North and West Hall could appeal to future medical school students by providing them a home close to campus. Also, the conference center/boutique hotel will draw in people from all over the world who are visiting Kalamazoo. Hopefully, the developments will attract people who would not have discovered East Campus on their own, and those people will leave with an appreciation for East Campus and WMU?s history.?
Although excited, she is hesitant to celebrate.
?Although there are plans for East Campus, whether or not there will be funds is still questionable,? she said.
?The amount of money the project receives is not definite yet; it depends on how much money the legislature appropriates. Therefore, the amount of development on East Campus depends on how much money the project receives. There is still no guarantee that anything will happen.?
In addition to that, Bell said, from a preservation standpoint she hopes the historic integrity of the buildings will be maintained ? on the exterior, as well as the interior.
?The interior of the buildings have been largely untouched for 50 years. East Campus is a treasure trove of original fixtures and woodworking. Preserving features such as these could add a unique touch to the interiors. Hopefully designers will consider this idea,? she said. ?I?m also curious to see how the parking lot built into the hill will look ? but I?d rather have that than have a building torn down for parking space.?
Although this is a positive year for East Campus, Bell is less then pleased with the initiative, or lack thereof, of preserving it over the years.
?Speaking for myself, and not necessarily for SFEC, I think WMU could have made more of an effort to preserve East Campus. I do not place all of the blame on the current administration. Instead of leaving the buildings to sit and slowly deteriorate, they are actually doing something with East Campus and facing the question of what should happen there,? she said.
?Past administrations virtually ignored East Campus and focused their attention on other building projects. Instead of maintaining existing buildings, WMU undertook new building projects that drew attention and funds away from other structures. Throughout the years, instead of gradually updating the buildings on East Campus, they were left to quietly sit on Prospect Hill and deteriorate. Today, the buildings are structurally sound. They have stood for over 100 years and could probably outlast most buildings on West Campus.?
Bell explained that because the buildings were not slowly modernized, the cost of completely modernizing the buildings from scratch is great. However, they would not survive a building code evaluation.
?It?s like taking care of a car. If you don?t perform basic maintenance, such as changing the oil or rotating the tires, it will deteriorate quickly,? she explained.
?The same thing happened with East Campus. It was not taken care of, and now the campus is left with a broken down 1954 Corvette.?
She added that like the 1954 Corvette, the buildings on East Campus are classic.
?Buildings like the ones on East Campus are not built today,? she said.
?They exhibit a timelessness that cannot be replaced. However, they were not taken care of, and now the cost of repairing them is more than what WMU wants to spend. If more effort had been made to maintain the buildings, they would not be in the condition that they are today. The repairs would have been less daunting.?
Seniors Alexa Witte, film video and media studies major, and Erica Thomas, communications major are perfect examples of students not having much knowledge of WMU?s birthplace, but still having sentiment toward the buildings.
?I don?t know much about East Campus?s history, and it?s a little embarrassing considering that I?ve lived here for four years,? Witte said.
Witte explained that she thinks it?s important to have knowledge of your entire campus, although she felt a bit hypocritical because she doesn?t know much about it.
?I feel like it should be preserved as it is a big part of our heritage,? she added. ?And it?s really beautiful!?
Thomas said she didn?t have much knowledge about East Campus?s history, but does believe that it is a big part of Western?s beginning.
?I feel it is important to know about such an old building that started what is our campus today,? she said.
?I think as long as East Campus is taken care of and is restored, students will be able to use the buildings again and fulfill its purpose as part of Western?s history.?
Although it is apparent that there are very different types of people on WMU?s campus and throughout Kalamazoo, one thing is certain: Most students, faculty, administration and community members regardless of age, major or ethnicity, have pride and respect for the history of Western. Both of which will be made apparent if, and when, the administration makes a final decision about the fate of these historical landmarks.
Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=29350
Posted by njstrehl on Feb 2 2012. Filed under Breaking, Campus, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry Nora Strehl
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