University explains plans for expansion

The lands along Alexander Road and Harrison Street will likely be the sites of future academic and research facilities, University officials recently told members of the Princeton Regional Planning Board.

The announcement, made last Wednesday, marked a shift from the University's previous longterm expansion strategy, which called for the development of a parallel campus on the West Windsor lands between Lake Carnegie and Route 1.

"We've become increasingly focused on the longterm importance of trying to make sure that the basic academic and educational buildings remain on this side of [Lake Carnegie]," said Bob Durkee '69, University vice president and secretary.

The revised strategy is aimed at containing all academic facilities and undergraduate dorms within a 10-minute walk of Frist Campus Center, he said.

"I don't think this is going to be very dramatic," Durkee said. "There are going to be more faculty and graduate students, but the undergraduate number is going to stay in place for quite some time" after the 500-student increase slated for 2007.

"The trustees," he added, "have been quite clear about that."

Though University planners no longer intend to build a second major campus on the West Windsor properties, they told officials from Princeton Borough, Princeton Township and West Windsor last Wednesday that they may use that space to house graduate students, faculty and staff in the future.

But the density of development on the land between Lake Carnegie and Route 1 will be less than originally planned, Durkee said.

"We only want to develop along the edges," he said. "We want to keep as much of the middle as green space as we can."

Durkee added that over the next two decades, academic and residential facilities would remain in their current locations — with some spilling over into the Alexander Road corridor — but that support functions would increasingly move to the far side of Lake Carnegie.

"What we would do on the other side of the lake are things that lend themselves to a little more distance," Durkee said. "Some facilities now within a 10-minute walk [of Frist Campus Center] might move over [to the other side of the lake]."

However, he did not identify which facilities would make the move.

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Durkee, who delivered the presentation to the Princeton Regional Planning Board's Circulation Committee along with University Architect Jon Hlafter GS '63, defended the University's longterm expansion plans.

"Fields of knowledge are constantly being created," Durkee said. "If Princeton is going to continue to be one of the world's leading research universities, inevitably over time we're going to have to move into some of these new fields without leaving the old ones."

President Tilghman has committed the University to improving the engineering and creative arts programs, Durkee said, by increasing the number of faculty and expanding their facilities.

More faculty will require more graduate students and residential and academic space to house them, he added.