The Community Task Force analyzed and examined a presentation during its meeting Monday, which included a design that replaced on-campus buildings, including Cullinane Hall and the Cabot Physical Education Center, with residence halls, and possibly relocate academic buildings to the edges of Northeastern’s campus.
Director of Government Relations and Community Affairs Jeff Doggett said the presentation was in response to the task force’s specific ideas and was only an exercise meant to bring about more discussion in the committee.
“The task force asked us to put all housing in the center of campus … we wanted people to see this visually,” Doggett said.
During previous meetings the task force discussed the idea of constructing more residence halls in the center of campus, which the committee defined as between Massachusetts Avenue and the Ruggles MBTA station, and Huntington Avenue and the orange line tracks. Monday’s meeting was the first time the committee as a whole was able to visually sense what their idea would look like.
At earlier task force meetings, President Richard Freeland set a goal to provide housing for 75 percent of Northeastern’s undergraduate population. Doggett said to achieve that goal, an additional 4,600 beds would need to be added.
During Monday’s presentation, David Lee, a partner with Stull and Lee, hired by the university as its Institutional Master Plan architect, said 1.8 million gross square feet would be needed to accommodate the additional students who would live on campus. Northeastern’s campus is currently more than 6 million square feet.
When members of the task force asked Lee why he did not add residence halls on Krentzman Quadrangle or Centennial Commons for Monday’s option, Lee asked if the task force wanted him to build on one of the university’s oldest spaces. Task force members responded with, “My neighborhood’s historic too,” and, “It’s not Harvard Yard.”
Most academic and administrative buildings are located in the central core of campus, and task force members said they would rather have those buildings on the edges of campus near their neighborhoods than more residence halls.
Besides more centralized residence halls – including one 20-story hall near Forsyth Street – the presentation examined on Monday also included new buildings in areas on North Lot, Camden Lot, Columbus Lot and Parcel 18 near Ruggles and Tremont streets. An additional 800,000 gross square feet of academic buildings would need to be built to replace the ones removed from the center of campus because of the additional student housing. Doggett said the square footage was calculated using mathematical assumptions.
Lee said during the meeting that as construction would be taking place, Northeastern would have to add an additional 1 million gross square feet for future development to stay competitive with other universities. That brought the total of new buildings as designed in Monday’s presentation to 3.64 million square feet – more than half Northeastern’s current size.
The heights of some of the possible academic buildings on the edges of campus range from eight stories to 25 stories on Columbus Lot.
The lot on Columbus Avenue was the proposed site for a multi-use athletic stadium the university is currently trying to raise funds to build. The Student Government Association passed legislation last summer to modify and raise the Campus Recreation Fee for students to help fund the building of the stadium.
The heights of some of the academic buildings did not sit well with task force members, including Pat Flaherty. The Mission Hill resident said to make the January proposal deadline for sites where new residence halls can be built, the task force may need to meet more than its current once per month schedule.
“It’s complicated and not an easy fix,” she said after the meeting. “I think [Monday’s meeting] was a good step forward.”
Lee said, as Monday’s presentation was only an exercise, the residence halls in the center of campus could be taller if their uses were split between housing and academics, creating shorter buildings closer to surrounding neighborhoods.
The next task force meeting is scheduled for July 26 and will address the financial and economic aspects of adding more residence halls in the center of campus.
