Illustration by Bob Scott
On a sweltering summer day, a guide leads a group of incoming Virginia Commonwealth University students and their parents along the pedestrian walkway on Shafer Street toward the intersection of Franklin Street.
“You see this construction there?” The guide gestures to metal fencing blocking the pedestrian path that the group must circumvent. “It’s really not there during the year; they really only do construction during the summer.”
What the students and parents see as a construction project, Virginia Commonwealth University planner Jeff Eastman sees as the first visible steps of the ONE VCU Master Plan, or what the 116-page document calls intersection improvements at the “front doors” of the campus.
“It addresses the different ways that people step onto and experience campus,”Eastman says. “We are working with the city to make the streets more pedestrian- and bike-friendly. And we are doing that through design.”
Those design changes include curb extensions, higher-visibility crosswalks and greenery.
The master plan was announced in March 2019 after five years of studies that included environmental surveys and focus groups, alignment with the VCU and VCU Health System strategic plans and with athletic department plans for an off-campus athletic village consolidating and upgrading facilities.
It’s the first master plan to set forth a unified vision for school properties. Data were also gathered from surveys on campus use, querying students about the best places to relax as well as the uncomfortable parts of campus. Graduate students, faculty, staff and neighbors of the Monroe Park campus as well as medical residents and VCU Health System staff responded to surveys or attended community meetings. The response showed a need for streetscape improvements and more open spaces.
Priorities emerged based on six guiding principles: placemaking, mobility and safety, unifying the campus, student success, program synergies, and patient success. The plan also evaluated off-site properties. VCU’s strategic plan for 2018-25 homed in on four themes: student success, national prominence, urban and regional transformation, and diversity driving excellence. “All of the projects proposed were judged on whether they support those principles,” Eastman says.
The plan comes 50 years after the Richmond Professional Institute and Medical College of Virginia merged to create Virginia Commonwealth University. Since RPI and MCV’s beginnings, Eastman says, they have repurposed hundreds of existing buildings. “Only in recent decades has VCU built buildings specifically for higher education,” he says. “But the buildings did not keep pace with growth.”
Eastman notes that the master plan addresses more than $200 million in deferred maintenance needs. Twenty-six new buildings are slated for construction, and eight building renovations are planned. Construction continues on a $93 million engineering research building at Cary and Belvidere streets, scheduled to open in 2020.
The building’s first floor is a maker space. The second floor is devoted to computer science, with large labs where students can interact with fellow students and professors. The upper floors are designed with flexible huddle rooms where students can get together to talk about engineering problems. Biomedical engineering will have an increased emphasis. There will be a focus on interactions with other disciplines such as business, medicine and the arts, a key concept of the master plan.
“It is all designed around experiential learning and getting students’ hands on projects,” says Barbara D. Boyan, dean of VCU’s engineering college.
VCU students walk by the recently renovated library. (Photo courtesy VCU)
Construction Ahead
In 2019, VCU is scheduled to have at least $900 million in construction projects underway across the city. Work continues on a $349.2 million adult outpatient facility at North 10th and East Leigh streets, and on a $350 million in-patient children’s hospital on East Marshall Street.
Another key master plan component for the medical campus is a transdisciplinary neuroscience building, which may mean more research opportunities for undergraduates.
Also, funds have been approved for a $121 million STEM building. Richmond BizSense reported in May that the Virginia General Assembly awarded $105 million to VCU for the science, technology, engineering and math building to be built on the current site of the Franklin Street Gym.
Carolyn Conlon, director of communications for the VCU administration, says other projects include a new arts and innovation academic building at the southeast corner of Broad and Belvidere streets and a new interdisciplinary academic and laboratory building on Linden Street in the heart of the Monroe Park campus.
“The interdisciplinary academic and laboratory building will provide more than 204,000 square feet of modern classroom and lab space,” Conlon says via email. It will house classes and labs currently held in VCU’s Temple Building and Oliver Hall, “making it possible to decant, demolish or renovate older campus buildings and spaces,” according to Conlon.
Anchored in the Richmond Arts District, the arts and innovation academic building will face the Institute for Contemporary Art. Shawn Brixey, former dean of the School of the Arts, says the proposed building is in the planning stage. “This is part of the culture of innovation,” says Brixey. “We realize we are a true partner with engineering, medicine and business. These would be spaces that would provide a high level of innovation and learning.”
A rendering of Broad and Belvidere streets, with a new arts and innovation academic building across from the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU (Image courtesy VCU)
Building Community
VCU has also started studies on other master plan projects, including a student commons and wellness facility and public-private partnership projects for student housing that will add up to 1,000 more beds. These dormitories will have more of what Boyan describes as “draw-open” spaces, where activities are taking place and students can congregate and build community.
“It is known that students who live on campus do better academically,” says Mary Patton Cox, a university architect. “These changes directly benefit students. It is a transitional time in their lives. There is a huge need to have a sense of belonging. They have a need for it to be a nurturing place. These are places where these students grow into adulthood.”
In the master plan, Franklin Street, with its numerous older homes, is viewed as a better location for residences, while Grace Street is envisioned as a commercial “Main Street.” The development of a block-and-a-half-long college green will straddle Main Street, surrounded by academic buildings and fronted by an expanded student commons and wellness facility on the south end and Cabell Library on the north end.
“The student commons are a high priority because its purpose is like a living room,” says Cox. “Student organizations can have space there. We want places where students want to go to, not just pass through, where they can develop their socialization skills and go from adolescence to adulthood.”
The view from the other side of Broad and Belvidere (Photo courtesy VCU)
On the Road
Planners also looked at how people arrive and get around on campus to develop initiatives that seek to encourage walking and biking and to enhance safety for cyclists and pedestrians.
Conlon says another significant benefit of the plan for the community and region is VCU’s partnership with GRTC Transit system, in which the school paid GRTC $1.5 million and in return staff and students ride free. “For VCU, it gives students and employees an efficient way to travel between campuses, provides greater access to businesses and resources in all parts of the city, and has the potential to reduce parking demand on campus and in surrounding neighborhoods,“ Conlon says via email.
The planning process involved nearly 200 community meetings. Jerome Legions, president of the Carver Community Civic Improvement League, a community north of Broad Street, says the VCU planners were receptive to his concerns about larger buildings dwarfing the low-rise neighborhood. Legions says adding dorms is a good idea because short-term student renters in homes near campus do not always adhere to neighborly standards of the long-term residents.
“I would like to see these streetscapes not stop [abruptly] where VCU starts,” says Legions. “If VCU is on the other side of the street, if they are going to plant trees, the green space should be for everyone and extended to the neighborhood. Also, in the commercial spaces, they should rent to mom- and pop-business. It creates a better buzz. It will also benefit Richmonders and should aim to bring in an influx of Richmonders to support those business. It should be a lively additional shopping center, like Carytown. They should allow those entrepreneurs to use those parking decks for their customers.”
University planners say they were careful to work with the city and the surrounding communities. Eastman says the master plan aims to maintain the urban character of the campus while enhancing facilities and infrastructure as well as elevating the experience for staff, students and patients.
As projects continue to develop, there is a commitment to adhere to the plan, while incorporating flexibility to refine details as the build-outs happen. Meredith L. Weiss, vice president for administration, calls the master plan a vision for VCU of how the institution will educate students.
“Any project by itself is exciting,” Weiss says. “Together it’s transformational.”
