On Dec. 30, Georgetown filed its 2010 Campus Plan with the D.C. Zoning Commission. The plan includes renovations to Lauinger Library, a new student center in New South, and a new athletic training facility on campus. President John DeGioia said the campus plan “represents modest, targeted growth opportunities that will meet our strategic needs for the next decade, enabling us to further strengthen our position as one of the world’s leading universities.” But for the Citizens Association of Georgetown and the Burleith Citizens Association, even modest University growth has become unacceptable, and both groups have expressed strong, and unjustified, opposition to the plan.
The University’s neighbors have been neither forthright nor rational in their arguments against the 2010 Campus Plan. Now, despite the University’s efforts at compromise, such as their decision to drop the contentious 1789 block graduate student housing, local residents are continuing to present what is a very moderate plan for campus growth as a threat to their neighborhoods. Even after the scaled-back plan was revealed, CAG made unconstructive comments like, “If we fail at reversing the trend, the future of Georgetown and surrounding communities is uncertain.” In the past, members of the BCA have exaggerated the impact that the plan would have on the neighborhood by saying that the University intended to increase student enrollment by the thousands. They rarely acknowledge, however, that this figure represents a planned increase in graduate students—not undergraduates.
The University should be praised for making concessions to its neighbors in the final campus plan. But some of their compromises went too far to assuage neighbors’ concerns, such as their elimination of plans for a taller smokestack above Georgetown’s heating and cooling plant. The University had planned to increase the height of the smokestack, located next to Yates, so that the plant’s emissions would dissipate harmlessly in the atmosphere and not linger in the air on campus. But because neighbors vehemently opposed the larger smokestack with a factually dubious scare campaign, the University scrapped the plan rather than standing up for the health of those who live and work on campus. There is a balance between cooperating with our neighbors and pursuing the best interests of the University. In this instance, with student health at stake and with the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval, the smokestack should have been a non-negotiable issue.
Ultimately, the nature and tone of the debate lie in the neighbors’ hands. So far their response has been immature and irrational. The University should continue engaging the neighbors, but it must not play into their hands by conceding important elements of the plan. Administrators need to stand their ground on what little is left in the 2010 Campus Plan.
