INC NEWS - Duke will discuss Central Campus (Herald-Sun)

[John Schelp]

Duke will discuss Central Campus
Herald-Sun, 20 March 2006

Ten months since they last briefed the public about
Duke University's plans for revitalizing its Central
Campus, university officials will hold another
community meeting Tuesday evening. 

The session, like the one last May, will be at Asbury
United Methodist Church at the corner of Clarendon
Street and Markham Avenue near Duke's East Campus. It
begins at 6 p.m. 

Duke Provost Peter Lange and Kemel Dawkins, vice
president of campus services, lead a university task
force that is planning the redevelopment. They will
speak and answer questions during Tuesday's session. 

Central Campus, as its name implies, lies between
Duke's East and West campuses. It is the site of aging
apartments for upperclassmen and graduate students and
miscellaneous university offices. The first phase of
the project will be to replace the apartments with new
housing. Duke wants to increase their 1,000 beds by
about 200. 

The university also aims to better integrate the area
into the life of the university as a whole. Officials
say Duke is fortunate to still have centrally located
land -- Central Campus is about 200 acres -- available
for expansion. 

It also is partly in an area of increasing commercial
importance, bordering Erwin Road, which is lined with
new hotels, offices and shops. It's also near Ninth
Street, a student-oriented strip of restaurants and
boutiques in what was once a shopping area for the
former Erwin Cotton Mills factory nearby. 

About three weeks ago, officials in the Duke-Durham
Partnership invited members of the Old West Durham
Neighborhood Association to the campus for an informal
meeting at which members of the neighborhood
association could discuss any town-gown issue, said
the association's president, John Schelp. The
neighborhood members repeatedly said Central Campus
was at the top of the list, he said. 

The neighborhood members also were shown diagrams of
where the new student apartments may be built and a
new pedestrian and bus route between East and West
campuses, he said. 

Also at that meeting, Duke officials repeated an
important assurance from last May, Schelp said -- that
Duke will seek a college/university zoning for the
site that limits retail uses to those that serve its
educational mission. Schelp and others have been
watching the project closely for any signs that Duke's
retail operations there might supplant patronage of
Ninth Street businesses. 

"Duke's announcement last year was a victory for
common sense," Schelp said Sunday. "We look forward to
seeing a development plan for Central Campus." 

University officials have said that retail operations
on Central Campus will exist primarily to serve
students, much like existing ones on other parts of
the campus. 

"We're just happy to help Duke become a better
neighbor," Schelp said. 

Some Durham residents also have wondered aloud why the
formal planning process couldn't include interested
parties from beyond the university walls. 

"I think it's good they're having some dialogue," said
Josh Parker, who has attended the two previous public
meetings and asked university officials to consider
opening the planning process to outsiders. "I wish
there was a little more back and forth than the
university letting us know what they're doing."