Housing Plans Include Staff, Faculty, Students

By VIC COX

Depending on the mix of housing styles—townhouse, single-family, or apartment—and ratio of owners to renters, the property already owned locally by the University could accommodate 2,900 to 4,000 housing units in addition to what has been built. This admittedly preliminary estimate is from Ray Gindros, head of Urban Design Associates of Pittsburgh, the consultants hired by Housing and Residential Services (H&RS) to help create a 15- to 20-year Housing Master Plan for UCSB.

Gindros and his team of planners and designers were on campus earlier this month to solicit opinions from focus groups of faculty, staff, and students on elements being assembled for the master plan. This was the second round in a process that last month had people from these groups telling the team what they thought were the campus's physical strengths and weaknesses as well as their desires for housing.

Willie Brown, executive director of H&RS, and Gindros promised more workshops with better-defined ideas later in the spring quarter. Posting some of the working maps and documents on a publicly accessible Web site around this time was also deemed likely. "Our goal," Gindros said, "is to give you a framework within which to operate."

What was new and welcome, especially to staff employees present for a briefing aimed at them, was the inclusive nature of the planning. "We've primarily focused on student housing (before now)," said Brown, "but we're trying to broaden that focus to include faculty and staff. We want to incorporate a broad view of the campus community."

Other themes emerged from these discussions: Housing design should protect and enhance the natural beauty of the area while fostering mixed neighborhoods of students and employees that would promote a sense of community.

To the faculty group, Gindros said the new housing was not only for new faculty, though the damper of local housing prices on recruitment was a major driver in the master plan.

Later, he added that while there is enough land to try different residential designs, "in no case can the full range of (employee) needs be accommodated." In fact, the tentative goals set by H&RS for the consultants were that the plans would provide housing for 75 percent of the faculty, 50 percent of the staff, 50 percent of students with families, and 34 percent of the single students.

"There will be choices to be made," said Gindros.