The Joint West Campus Area Committee announced dramatic changes for some of west campus' most familiar landmarks Wednesday. The destruction of Van Hise and Union South, as well as the redevelopment of Eagle Heights and the Lakeshore dormitories are among reconstruction plans for the next 20 years.
Major goals of the construction include the reworking of campus utility lines, converting parking lots to multistory decks, and updating antiquated research facilities.
The utility line construction will most directly affect current UW-Madison students, as it includes the tearing-up and closing of a large portion of Observatory Drive for over one year and commences this spring. The lines will connect central campus' heating and cooling pipes with the new, energy-efficient West Campus Cogeneration Facility. Observatory Drive itself will be overhauled in the process, featuring bike lanes and more street lighting and trees once construction is complete in the fall of 2006.
The committee was not without a sense of aesthetics. Their plans included many new grassy areas, including a recreational field next to the Natatorium and a small grass quad amidst the Lakeshore dormitories where a parking lot currently stands.
\The plans actually create more green space,"" said UW Facilities Planning and Management Vice Chancellor Alan Fish.
Other imminent changes to campus are additional Lakeshore dorms and the replacement of Van Hise Hall and Union South with new buildings. A massive consolidation and reconfiguration of the medical and research facilities located on far west campus is intended to compensate for the increase in health sciences research projected for the next decade.
""There are forty-five acres of land on that part of campus and it is very poorly laid out for the mixed-use, high-density we see this becoming,"" Fish said.
