USC's Specific Plan Aims to Integrate University, Surrounding Business, Residential Communities

Brief our readers on the master planning process that USC has undertaken for the University Park campus here in Los Angeles.

The university's master plan process started approximately five years ago as the university was going through the discretionary approval process for Galen Center. This land use entitlement was the first discretionary city action and environmental impact report that USC was required to complete for any campus development.

During this process, both the city and the community expressed a desire to see the university's Master Development Plan. They wanted to see where and what future building projects we had in mind as part of the Galen approval process. They wanted to see how the Galen Center fit into the longer term campus development plan. The university did not have a current Master Plan. The last master planning exercise the university had completed was in the 1960s, which was the same time period and context as when Pepperdine chose to leave the urban core of the city.

The university had recently updated its Strategic Plan, and our master planning process built upon the goals defined in that plan. Universities, especially private universities such as USC, are very entrepreneurial. Campus growth is generally dictated by the availability of funding. If a dean or school is able to raise the funds, the provost would generally authorize a new building if it fit within the academic mission of the broader university.

We started the master planning process to more holistically look at development for the campus and the surrounding community. One of the first principals we came up with was that everything we do as a campus is related to our academic mission. We're not a real estate developer seeking to maximize profits and our land; assets should only be used to further the academic mission.

As we got deeper into the planning process, we discovered the university had shifted from a commuter school to a residential university. We found 87 percent of our undergraduates live within a mile of the campus. This has put a tremendous burden on the local neighborhoods surrounding USC to house students. With 16,000 undergraduates, we operate and manage approximately 7,000 residential beds. A large portion of the other 9,000 undergraduates live in non-university-owned housing developments. The private development community has responded and met some of the housing needs for these students. Examples are the Tuscany project and Urban Partner's Gateway Student Housing Project.

Another major objective of the Master Plan was to create enough university controlled housing to guarantee four years of undergraduate housing and the first year of graduate housing for all university students.

In order to meet this goal we've estimated the university and its private development partners need to build about 7,500 additional beds through the master planning period. This is not total additional units, but student beds, which can be configured in a variety of apartment styles.

The area that the university has identified to accommodate the bulk of its new student housing is the area North of Jefferson Boulevard and west of Hoover Street. This is an area of approximately 35 acres and is the location of the University Village shopping center and two university-owned apartment style housing developments. The developments were built in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s and have outlived their useful economic life. This is the major redevelopment component of the campus Master Plan, which has the potential to be a transformational project.

We are looking at this area to house the majority of student beds called for in the plan, a pedestrian retail environment to support the university and the community, additional academic space, a possible lab school for the K-8 student population, and approximately 250 faculty housing units. The goal here is to create a university residential community which meets the needs of both the academic and the existing community.

The university recently invited the Urban Land Institute (ULI) to help inform the planning process and to gather input from outside the campus. How are their findings integrated into the vision and planning you are doing presently?

In 2006 the university invited the ULI to participate in a two day design charette to advise us on future development around the University Park Campus. Essentially, they implemented what they call a TAP process-technical advisory panel. We asked the TAP panel: What can the university do with its land holdings-the 35 acres North of Jefferson-that can benefit both the university and the community? If you look at Jefferson there must be thousands of pedestrian crossings a day by students that live north of campus. One of their recommendations was to narrow Jefferson to make it more of a pedestrian oriented street. They also observed that the university had a tremendous opportunity to use its real estate north of Jefferson to create a mixed use community that could serve the retail needs of the academic community-faculty, staff and students-and also improve the retail environment for its surrounding neighborhoods.

Their recommendation to provide housing for a greater number of our students in this area would effectively free up housing stock in the surrounding community. It was ULI's vision to create community housing opportunities by providing housing for our students. Greg Vilken said that a redeveloped University Village could create a "their-there place." Similar in concept to the Downtown Los Angeles slogan of "Live-Work-Play," the campus slogan at the village site could be "Live-Learn-Play." The ULI saw this as the opportunity to create the 24-7 environment that would keep our students on campus. We have taken ULI to heart with this recommendation.

Let's now turn to the Specific Plan you're working on. The numbers indicate that the Specific Plan will connect 2.5 million square feet of new academic facilities to 350,000 square feet of retail space and 2.1 million square feet of mostly student housing over the next ten to 20 years. Is that an accurate reflection of the plan?

Yes, that is. Again, the biggest component is the student housing. When we started this master planning process we approached the city and discussed possible ways to implement the plan. Last fall, Councilman Park's Office directed the Planning Department to prepare a Specific Plan to implement the university's Master Plan. The council motion occurred in early December. The Specific Plan includes what we are calling areas one, two, and three, which is almost 100 percent university owned. Currently the campus zoning is "Q" R4. The Q condition requires a discretionary approval for about anything we build on our academic campus. We have found this to be an unwieldy and cumbersome process. The university would like to use the Specific Plan process to identify a more streamlined permit review process for future academic buildings.

An additional item we would like the Specific Plan to change is the current parking standards for the academic campus. Currently we are required to provide two spaces for every 1,000 square feet of new development regardless of the purpose. We have had conversations with planning and DOT, who support the concept of tying the parking count to enrollment or full time equivalent employees.

The university is a unique land use within the city and we believe the Specific Plan offers an opportunity to tailor land use regulations to better meet the needs of the university. Part of the strategy of the Specific Plan would be to streamline and create more comprehensive, readily useable zoning for the core campus. The other goal of the Specific Plan is to establish design guidelines and development standards for the University Village area. We realize this build out could likely take a number of years and have asked the city to consider a development agreement as part of the Specific Plan approval.

The ULI report considered relocating 83,000 square feet of ground floor retail at University Gateway. The recommendation was to use Vermont Avenue as the location. What are your thoughts as to where the retail goes?

Part of the ULI discussion was to make sure we had a strong retail program with the critical mass to be successful. The ULI group cautioned against dispersing the retail development and recommended that we concentrate the more campus-serving retail at the University Village site and shift the neighborhood-serving retail uses to the Vermont Corridor. This was about the same time the university had finished the programming and design of a major new student campus center in the middle of the campus. The ULI suggested relocating the campus center to the University Village site, which would add more activity to the village area.

The recommendation about the Gateway Project was similar in tone: they noted the university community would have some retail at the corner of Figueroa and Jefferson, a concentration of food service and other student related uses in the middle of campus, and more retail at the village site. Their recommendation was to concentrate the pedestrian and retail activity all at one site. Since the conclusions of the ULI TAP, the Gateway Project has attracted more community- and highway-oriented uses, such as pharmacy and a grocer.

The vision we are now pursuing for the village site is more of a town center, retail-type environment, which could be anchored by a University Bookstore following the Borders model. This bookstore would also feature USC related clothing and goods. A fitness center for our students could be another potential anchor along with an art house type movie theatre. We have also considered a university related hotel and small conference center in the neighborhood of about 150 rooms.

Vermont is the gateway to campus from the 10 Freeway so we're very interested in Vermont. ULI talked about putting the smaller neighborhood-serving uses along Vermont, like the laundry, dry cleaners, and shoe repair and other smaller-scale, retail-type uses. The university generally supports the notion that Vermont is a neighborhood street and this recommendation makes good sense.

USC and the Coliseum, through the urging of Councilman Parks, entered a 50-year lease recently. How does the Coliseum fit into the planning and thinking of the university?

We think of the Figueroa Corridor as the Los Angeles sports and entertainment district, book-ended by Dodger Stadium and the Coliseum. Obviously the university has a long term relationship with the Coliseum. It's been the home of the football team forever. There is a reason we call this campus the University Park Campus; it's adjacent to Expo Park. They both have a park-like atmosphere. The Coliseum is a real asset to the campus and the community. The Coliseum cannot operate without the university's parking for any of its major events. There is a real synergy, and we view ourselves as partners with the Coliseum and Exposition Park.

TPR has covered the Figueroa Corridor story for more than two decades. Now that L.A. Live is built out-how do you envision connecting the university up the Figueroa Corridor to the lifeblood of Downtown Los Angeles?

We see a great opportunity to develop all types of housing along the corridor. Many developers are currently looking at student housing opportunities closer to our campus and market rate housing the farther north you go along the corridor. Many of the parcels are underutilized and with the investment in transit the corridor offers a tremendous opportunity for increased residential density.

We see our students visiting L.A. Live and believe it to be an asset to the City. The university would like to look at better transportation options to connect the campus with L.A. Live. I have seen students riding their bikes up and down the corridor at 9 pm. The light rail will link the campus to L.A. Live and the rest of the city. We see L.A. Live adding energy and complementing the Coliseum and Figueroa Corridor.

There will soon be a rail system going by the campus. Traffic is a dominant issue for the community and the city. How does your planning process deal with traffic?

Part of our vision has been to fully create a residential university where the car is not a necessity. We have greater than 50 percent of our students coming from outside of the state of California and would like to offer an experience where a student does not feel they need to own a car to fully experience college life in Los Angeles. We've been struggling with that notion and want to provide disincentives for our students to feel like they need to have a car here. Parking is expensive. Building parking lots is more expensive.

One of the successful things that the university has done is start a Flex or Zip Car program. They have been a tremendous success. We would like to continue with that. If you're a parent sending your child to school, rather than maintain a car or park a car, we feel it is much more economical to provide access to a Zip Car and give monthly allotment of Zip Car hours. We have also considered providing transit passes to our students which could be a very attractive benefit with the new Expo Line.