Greener acres

Planning sessions were held throughout Dalhousie. (Nick Pearce Photo)

Sexton emerges as a vibrant downtown campus. University Avenue becomes the heart of Studley Campus. Carleton grows into the hub for health sciences. These are all possibilities for the university as it looks to the future and its Campus Master Plan.

After five days of workshops March 4 to 7, phase two of the campus master planning process has produced many great ideas and lots of enthusiasm.

“There’s definitely momentum now,” says Mary Jane Adams, director of planning for Facilities Management.

That desire to move forward is reflected in the themes discussed during the workshops:

• An enhanced student experience;
• The urban role of the university;
• Improvements to University Avenue;
• Dalhousie’s need to compete in an ever-changing world;
• The importance of Sexton as a downtown campus;
• The need for the campuses to be more integrated and connected;
• A lasting commitment to environmental sustainability.

The seven themes are part of the process of looking at how much space Dalhousie has, where that land is located and what Dalhousie will do with it in the short term, over the next five years and also over the long term.

That multi-disciplinary approach is also evident now as the university looks to its own future. Some of the more than 400 faculty, staff, students and community members who attended the five sessions pointed out that Dalhousie cannot go it alone.

“We have to approach the planning together,” Ken Baird, a vice-president of Capital District Health Authority, said during the first day of the workshops. “We have to start thinking as a team.”

That’s the general consensus among HRM officials, the IWK/Grace Hospital and many others – that the university, the city, the hospitals and the private sector all must work together to explore new opportunities for development.

That community involvement pleases Aubrey Fricker, a Robie Street neighbour and a member of the Dalhousie University Community Committee. Dr. Fricker attended nearly every workshop.

“This planning process – and it’s a process more than a plan – is extremely encouraging. There’s a real reaching out and an attempt to create a flexible, adaptive and collaborative process,” says Dr. Fricker.

But there were also those who were more cautious. Student Chris Giacomantonio, president of the Dalhousie Association of Graduate Students (DAGS), had hoped more students would become involved. He’s concerned about the level of co-operation that’s required to carry out any changes.

“The question is more about those who will implement this plan, the administration and the different levels of government,” says Giacomantonio. “They all need to get behind this plan, together, or we’ll be looking at something that’s not as good as it should be.”

The next steps in the Master Campus Plan will be consolidating all the information that was gathered over the five days. The phase-one report should be out soon; a website is being developed and plans are underway for phase three. It will provide strategies for implementing the plan and be the last phase of the process.

The planning process is led by the IBI Group. This consulting team is a multi-disciplinary planning and design firm that has experience throughout North America with the planning and development of post-secondary campuses and educational facilities.

The team is led by Larry Sherman, a Toronto architect, planner and founding director of the group, along with Trevor McIntyre and Jamie Wright of IBI. Other members are: John Crace, a partner in WHW Architects of Halifax; Halifax landscape architects Cary Vollick of Vollick, McKee Petersmann & Associates; CBCL Ltd., Consulting Engineers of Halifax; Alexandre Pavlovski and Vladimir Kostylev of Green Power Labs Inc. of Dartmouth, and Raymond Murray of Hanscomb Ltd., a cost estimating firm that has offices across Canada.