On September 1, 2016, after many months of groundwork, Georgetown University paid the $6,500 fee and filed its 20-year Campus Plan proposal with the DC Zoning Commission.

It was accompanied by letters of support from leaders of key community groups, including the two nearby publicly elected Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (ANC) and local citizens associations.

Will there be anything left to talk about at the public hearing before the zoning commission on December 1, 2016? Does the broader community understand the dimensions of what GU has in mind?

GU’s 2017-2036 Campus Plan proposal is big and complicated, and involves major building projects, and increased employment and enrollment. Focusing on the 104-acre main campus, the plan includes:

• 1.3 million square feet of new building development, including a roughly 90-foot tall, 450,000 square-foot hospital wing slated to cost $560 million.

• 1,120 more full- and part-time university and hospital employees, an increase from 8,564 to 9,684.

• More students on the main campus to push against the cap of more than 14,000, with anticipated growth via graduate enrollment that will “in significant part” replace enrollment relocated in 2013 to the new School of Continuing Studies downtown.

• Expansion of parking, limited now to 4,080 spaces, via the addition of spots to accommodate shared car services and charging stations for electric vehicles.

• A new east-west road across the north side of campus that is expected to boost use of the entrance next to Glover Archbold National Park on Reservoir Road.

• Increases to on-campus housing and the possibility of buying or leasing apartment properties along MacArthur Boulevard, between Foxhall and Reservoir roads.

To these signs of vigorous enterprise must be added flags of caution about how the growth and activity will affect tightening congestion beyond the campus, as well as questions about the implications of novel and arcane provisions regarding how community challenges to plan changes are to be handled over the years of implementation.

Rubik’s Partnership

The calm surrounding the submission contrasts with the ill will of 2010 — when town-gown relations were scraping bottom over student debauchery in neighborhoods and plans to turn the campus western edge on the national park into a university commuter bus thruway.

Now, the chairman of the nearby ANCs 3D and 2E have filed official letters of support. Leaders of Burleith, Georgetown and Foxhall community groups have done the same.

The Georgetown Community Partnership — a collection of committees of GU officials and community members, and an outgrowth of the 2010 mire — has chimed in with its own expression of unanimity. This after many meetings to integrate and address community concerns in the interest of consensus, which has resulted in plans, for example, to minimize impact of hospital construction by having workers staged at satellite locations and bused to the job site.

But as the process spiraled toward the actual filing, with scrambling to nail down endorsements, the effort began to look like a hurry-up offense that was getting ahead of itself. A loose ball popped out on Monday, October 17, 2016, when the DC Zoning Commission denied a GU request for simultaneous review the closely linked hospital expansion with the rest of the university plan.

At the same time, the portrait of plan support is less than it appears. GU states in its filing that the ANCs “unanimously approved” the plan as presented, a formulation that minimizes concerns and that overlooks public dissent.

In the case of ANC 3D, to the northwest of the campus, the 10-member commission, with one vacancy and two members absent, voted 7-0 to support the plan, but only “in concept.”

Some commissioners voiced reservations about voting on what at the time was a draft and how such a vote might affect further review by the ANC. And regarding the GU MedStar hospital expansion plan — what GU calls a “central component” of its plan — the vote was 6-1.

Accounting And Counting 101

Deeper divisions might exist in communities around specific aspects of the plan. For example, GU’s commitment to its national park neighbor — a roughly 700-foot wide stretch of forest between the university and Foxhall Village — remains a question mark.

In addition to sending more traffic to a northern section of the park border, GU floats the prospect of replacing the Yates Field House that overlooks the park with a new facility, possibly including a hotel and conference center.

In both instances, the GU plan goes no further than to say that the projects will be done “appropriately,” given the park and Foxhall Village proximity. In the past, appropriate park side development in the eyes of GU has meant seeking to build a commuter bus road that would link the north campus with the south. GU withdrew the proposal in the controversy around its 2010 plan.

GU highlights plans for 2017-2036 to boost campus green space and also references measures such as reusing storm water to comply with tougher regulations imposed by DC in 2013. But it’s unclear how such interest would translate specifically into ameliorating the effects of more traffic next to the park and an existing outfall on the park border that contributes to forest floor erosion. (See, GU’s Loop Road Nouveau, August 9, 2016, The Hoe.org)

Recognizing that the circumstances around higher education will keep changing, GU wants to preserve “optionality” to amend its plan as the years proceed. The plan emphasizes the role of the community partnership to reach consensus when conflicts arise. It also lays out a legalistic structure for processing challenges, leaving questions about how current public review methods might be influenced.

Language from the plan, for example, includes text stating that “either the University or the community parties may unilaterally seek a Campus Plan amendment (“unilateral amendment”), subject to the procedures described below,” where it goes on to say that “community parties may file one Covered Amendment during the term of the Campus Plan occurring after January 1, 2024,” and that “for procedural reasons, the University will file the Covered Amendment on the behalf of the community parties.”

In some ways, it also is hard to get clear how much increased activity lies in store under the GU plan. For example, the plan’s current employee counts for the university don’t include categories such as temporary employees, those of entities that aren’t controlled by the university and those of contractors providing ancillary services.

Parking? GU states that main campus parking will remain under the current cap of 4,080 but that slots added for shared car services and charging stations won’t count. The plan doesn’t say how many spaces would be added.

GU has taken steps to curtail student parking in surrounding communities. All Traditional Undergraduate Program students are prohibited from bringing cars to campus or parking their cars on the street in Georgetown, Burleith, and Foxhall, a bar that is subject to limited exceptions, according to the plan.

A GU report for 2013-14 on its Campus Plan compliance notes that the shifting of 1,000 students to the continuing studies school downtown reduced West Georgetown street parking demand. Can demand for street parking in neighborhoods be expected to rise with the planned influx of such students on the main campus? That same report states that the main campus already has 12 shared-car spaces.

Overall GU enrollment reached 18,459 in Fall 2015, according to GU’s Office of Assessment and Decision Support, with a total of 7,562 undergraduates and 10,897 graduate and professional students.

GU has been moving to boost capacity for housing students on the main campus, while also keeping an eye out for options beyond its perimeter. For example, the 2017-2036 plan notes the possibility of buying or leasing apartment properties along MacArthur Boulevard, but only between Foxhall and Reservoir roads, and only with permission of organizations, such as the Foxhall Community Citizens Association and the ANC, and only with exclusion of use by undergraduates. (See, GU’s Better Neighbor Push, May 20, 2016, The Hoe.org)

As the GU Campus Plan review moves ahead, clarity about what’s to come will improve chances that the university and its neighbors, many of whose number have feet in both realms, will have, as the plan envisions, a “harmonious relationship.”

© 2016 John A. Bray