Posted May 14, 2024, 9:04 PM
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Detroiter4life
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Back home in Georgia!
Posts: 4,115
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U-M has released updated plans and maps for their 2050 campus master plan. What really has me excited are the plans for an automated transit system between the Central Campus and North Campus. The system would be elevated and will probably be similar to the people mover. More details are supposed to be released about this system in the coming weeks. Also, a BRT line is planned to connect South Campus and North Campus.
See updated maps for University of Michigan’s 25-year building plan
[IMG] UMTransit by Brandon Dolley, on Flickr[/IMG]
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It may be 25 years in the future, but long-term development plans at the University of Michigan are coming into focus.
Campus Plan 2050, which addresses mobility, energy, land use and other projects on the Ann Arbor campus during the next quarter century, has new drafts of its development plans.
The maps that provide frameworks for those plans are available at campusplan2050.umich.edu/#overview. They include aerial looks at layouts for the Central, Medical, Ross Athletic and North campuses, as well as the transit system, sustainable infrastructure and land-use plans. Campus Plan 2050 is the manifestation of the university’s Vision 2034 initiative, which sought to “define what UM wants to accomplish,” officials have said.
“The physical plan is creating facilities to support that,” said Sue Gott, the university’s associate director for planning and communication. “The vision is Vision 2034, and our facilities support that.”
The new drafts incorporate many elements of previous campus proposals, including the 2008 master plan that called for redevelopment of the North Woods around the North Campus Research Complex, Gott said. Other elements, such as the 2016 discussions on the Detroit Connector, are being considered, she said, but do not appear on the maps.
“We just wanted to make sure it’s understood (that) we haven’t completely abandoned those things,” she said of plans mulled over the last two decades.One of the new drafts shows the automated transit system that would connect the Central Campus transit area as far as the North Campus Research Complex off Plymouth Road. Automated means a transit system that does not have a driver, Gott said, and the university’s would operate on an elevated guideway.
More information on that project will be made available in the coming weeks, officials said. There will also be a bus rapid transit system that builds on the current one with “high-efficiency, high-capacity” technology, officials said.
The maps also reveal many areas for sustainability developments such as the geothermal exchange wells that reduce carbon by controlling heat in facilities with sub-surface resources. The areas with the most potential for these wells are the maintenance and power facilities surrounding Michigan Stadium and much of North Campus such as the proposed Leinweber Building and its accompanying geothermal facility. Rather that convert all campus energy to geothermal, it is more cost-effective to pick and choose areas, officials have previously told MLive. A full conversion campus-wide would cost about $3 billion, Drew Horning, UM’s interim assistant vice president for campus sustainability, said in March 2023.
Much of the development plans center on transforming North Campus, from an Innovation District to promote more variety in classes and research to a new hotel and conference center to a pedestrian connection to Central Campus.
The desire is to have the Ann Arbor campus operate as one campus rather than three individual ones between the North, Central and South ones, Gott said.
“One way North Campus benefits is by this more direct connectivity,” she said. Many of the maps show potential development areas in blue. North Campus has much of its open and green space color-coded this way, particularly north of the engineering and drama buildings and around the research complex.
Gott said the color-coded designations are not set-in-stone developments, stressing they are potential ones.
“We’re just continuing to show roughly what we think is available for development over the next 25 years,” she said.
North Campus is a focus for possible development since the land is already owned by the university, Gott said. If a building will be demolished for a project, it currently projects to be one in university hands, she added.
“We are not showing any demolitions,” she said of the new drafted plans. “It is only the land that we own that we’re we’re showing in these plans.”
The university had to purchase private properties in Ann Arbor to make possible future student housing developments. While the first phase of the Central Campus Housing Complex utilized the old Elbel Field, the second phase was made possible by the Board of Regents approving $75 million to acquire 49 properties last year.
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https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor...ding-plan.html
2050 Campus Master Plan: https://campusplan2050.umich.edu/#timeline
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