Thursday, November 8, 2001

Houstonian: Greening explains Sam's blueprint for next decade

Douglas Greening, director of the Physical Plant, spoke to a small gathering of faculty and students on the campus master plan that will take construction of SHSU into the next decade and beyond. The rest of the story is in the Houstonian.

Highlights:
...the master plan calls for at least five parking garages to be built at various locations on campus including behind the library, the University Hotel, the LSC and the Criminal Justice center.

Greening said constructing five garages before 2005 is both unlikely and unnecessary.

"That's a lot of parking garages to build in five years and I personally don't think it will happen," he said. "We may put one somewhere in the near future but I don't think we'll be looking at a lot unless they really pan out and are a success."

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Greening said the university plans to focus on surface parking by adding new lots and adding spaces to existing ones.

According to Greening, these new lots would account for 700 new spaces. He said students might see new parking lots near the tennis courts and in part of Colony Park.

"We know that Colony Park is pretty controversial and many students are not really happy about that," he said. "However, we do intend to just use the open space in the middle, not the area with the trees on both ends. I don't know if that's going to stay in the project or not, as far as I know it is still part of the project."

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To relieve traffic problems, the master plan also calls for street extensions and elimination of offset intersections to relieve areas of congested traffic.

Campus housing is the other major component of the plan to be tackled in the next five to 10 years.

"We regret doing no housing in the last master plan," he said. "Spencer feels it is the biggest problem on campus. It has been ignored for the past 20 years and it can't be anymore."

Greening said during his 10 years at SHSU, the Physical Plant has tried to keep the dorms in good condition but added that it is expensive.

"Our dorms are just tired. They're old and they've been around for a long time," he said. "You can go through and paint and put carpet down but when you walk through, it still looks like an old dorm."