On any given day, more than 25,000 students and faculty members walk on campus. It may seem crowded now, but if the 2007 Campus Master Plan is carried out, that number could increase by 10,000 during the next 20 years.
At the College Area Community Council meeting last Wednesday, Laurie Cooper, the San Diego State associate director for Facilities Planning, presented a plan that would accommodate such population growth.
The 2007 Campus Master Plan revises the original 2005 plan that the California Supreme Court said was not plausible for the community.
Remaining from the 2005 plan are the full-time equivalent student growth plan (the addition of 10,000 students), a goal to house 25 percent of the student body and the Alvarado Hotel Project.
However, new changes have been made. After a halt on the Paseo project, regrouping and resizing housing areas, Cooper said the community seemed to like the new plan during the meeting.
Rather than scrapping the proposal of 1,400 beds along with the Paseo project (agreements have not been made as to when or what will be built within the Paseo area), the new plan includes three new residence halls. The first hall is expected to be built north of Cuicacalli and will hold 600 beds. Also, the Maya and Olmeca residence halls would be demolished to build two new residence hall towers each accommodating 700 beds - more than twice as many as the Living Learning Center currently has.
"My impression was that the College Area community appreciated the plan because we're compressing our SDSU activities onto the SDSU campus more," Cooper said. "So it would be less likely that the SDSU students would live out in the community because we are providing more housing."
However, College Area Community Council President Doug Case said there were some concerns and questions about the new plan.
"At this point in the game, the first phase is identifying the things that need to be studied in the environmental report," Case said.
He said the questions raised included the effects of increased enrollment, additional housing, parking and traffic, which will need to be looked into further by the university in its Environmental Impact Report - a report that university representatives will use to analyze potential effects of the plan, as the costs of construction and development. This includes the area's air quality, housing, parking.
"If it's going to create a problem, then they'll decide how it's going to be mitigated," Case said of university planners.
Other new developments in the 2007 Master Plan include additional classrooms and a parking structure in the Alvarado Campus area, an expanded student union east of Cox Arena and exclusive faculty and staff housing in the Del Cerro area on the north side of Interstate-8.
Cooper said attending council and community members seemed to like the new ideas because the 2007 plan budgets for less square footage of use in the Alvarado area and only 370 living units for faculty and staff, rather than the original 540. In the 2005 plan, graduate students were allowed to live in the Del Cerro area and there was a retirement community proposed for construction for retired SDSU faculty and staff members.
Cooper said in the new plan, College Area residents wouldn't be affected as much as those from across the freeway.
Case said there weren't many residents from the Del Cerro area present at the meeting, but expects there will be more at the "Scoping" meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday in the Aztec Athletics Center auditorium.
The meeting is being held for the public to be informed of the new master plan proposals and to discuss the project and obtain information regarding the content and scope of the draft version of the EIR.
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