(09-25-2014 09:00 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote: Does NCST have a long term campus plan? I thought USC-East was the worst campus ever, as it is a solid 30+ minute walk from south campus as the Roost and baseball field to the Horseshoe. But NCST takes sprawl to levels I had previously considered unimaginable.
Swag - NC State has grown as it has because it is physically hamstrung by the railroad that bisects the main campus creating the need for tunnels, the land to the east of the main campus is a grant to the City for Pullen Park and should NC State encroach, the land reverts back to the Pullen heirs. To the south Centennial Campus is a close as it could be but Wade Avenue has a 300' right of way and then commercial interests bought land in the area prior to NC State obtaining their property from Governor Hunt in the 1980's.
The football stadium and vet school are at the Fairgrounds because Riddick Stadium on campus could not be enlarged without tearing down three dorms and the steam plant and the vet school wanted some farm land for the animals.
NC State sprawls no worse than OSU in Columbus and there are 40K students - it's not an urban setting and it has never been managed or planned as an urban project that was not dependent on the automobile.
Yes there is a "plan" but so what?
I have in my old NC State stuff a copy of a letter from the Chancellor to the NC State Student Senate where he assures us there will never be more than 18K students at NC State.
I said it was bull**** then and it was. State is currently in a phase of resisting student population growth but State doesn't fully control that - the UNC BOG will tell you how many students you better take before they tinker with the money. They did that to App State in the mid 1990's and ASU's student population has increased 50% in the last 15 or so years and Boone is the most difficult place in NC to build a building or develop land.
Finally, the economic impact of NC State on Raleigh has been such that any move by the University is embroiled with local politics and parasites seeking to make money off what the university does and does not do with the placement of the basketball arena being the prime example. Not agreeing to build it in downtown Raleigh is why Jim Valvano was run out of Raleigh. He pissed off big-money interests.
