UW-Madison representatives revealed another phase of the Campus Master Plan Thursday, unveiling basic plans for the tentatively named \University of Wisconsin-Madison Welcome Center.""
Steve Amundson, Director of the Campus Information and Visitor Center, appeared before the Downtown Coordinating Committee and conjured an image of the Welcome Center as a new and interactive hub serving campus visitors, students, alumni and donors on the corner of Park and Regent Streets.
""This area is a major gateway to the campus and an appropriate location [for the Welcome Center],"" said DCC Member Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4. ""Improving this gateway is long overdue.""
Amundson said he envisions the Welcome Center, now under construction and slated for completion in fall 2006, as primarily geared toward visitors and tourists, providing information about the UW-Madison campus and surrounding community through touch-screen interactive kiosks, historical displays, wall maps, public access computer work stations and monitors which display looping televised information.
The Welcome Center will also serve as an auxiliary facility to the CIVC located in the Red Gym. As its second priority, the Welcome Center will provide general information to prospective students and act as a telephone overflow resource for overloaded information lines at the CIVC.
Campus tours will still originate from the Red Gym, although systems for coordinating tours from the Welcome Center are still on the drawing board.
The presentation of the Welcome Center is the latest phase in the unfolding ""Master Plan,"" the university's long-range plan for the overhaul and redevelopment of the campus over the next 10 to 20 years.
Gary Brown, Office of Planning and Landscape Architecture director at UW-Madison's Facilities Planning and Management, sketched an overview for redevelopment.
""We're surrounded by urban development and residential neighborhoods, so we have to be creative and find ways to renovate existing buildings or remove buildings that have outlived their usefulness to make room for new development or open spaces,"" Brown said on the Master Plan website.
Brown updated the DCC on the university's assessment of the campus' physical environment, transportation needs and how open spaces help define the campus. He reiterated the university's goal to create a consistent look to the campus architecture.
