History At What Price?

One of the glories of the University of Arkansas is its proud history. It’s everywhere you look, in the buildings, grounds, and monuments. It’s protected, showcased, and visibly communicated. Eleven buildings in the campus core have been placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and handsome new plaques in the lobbies of these buildings tell their stories. In addition, our campus history committee has erected 30 historical markers across campus that denote the significant scientific, intellectual and cultural achievements of our faculty, as well as campus lore.

Most recently, we have celebrated the contributions of former UA student and president J. William Fulbright, founder of the world’s largest academic exchange program, with the Fay Jones/Maurice Jennings-designed Fulbright Peace Fountain and a new seven-foot bronze scuplture by Gretta Bader. More than a decade ago, with the help of the General Assembly and through a broad-based fund raising campaign, we restored our signature building, Old Main, at a cost approaching $10 million. We also found a way to restore historic Carnall Hall, built as a women’s dormitory in 1906, as a charming 49-room hotel and restaurant that will be ready for operation later this year.

Tying all of this history together is our unique Senior Walk, five miles of campus sidewalks on which the names of each of our 120,567 graduates are etched.

Thus, our past is very much a part of our present and our future. As a professor and administrator on this campus for more than a quarter century, I have lived through almost 20 percent of our campus’s 132-year history. I continue to draw inspiration from my walks through our beautiful, historic campus core, which similarly inspires our students, faculty, staff and the hundreds of thousands of visitors who grace our grounds every year.

Just as a university should celebrate its past, it must even more assiduously adapt itself to the future (or risk ossification). Our recent purchase of the former 4-H House property, a 53-year-old stone structure that the original owners sold to a private developer in 1978, is a case in point. In recent weeks, UA alumnae and other concerned individuals have flooded area newspapers with letters urging the University not to demolish the structure for campus parking needs—as has been our sole intent in purchasing it—but to preserve the building for other uses.

I would like to discuss the planning that governed our purchase of the 4-H House, not to dissuade others from their opinions, but to present the larger context for this decision. While the University respects the point of view expressed by those who wish to preserve the structure, this is not a simple choice between sparing a house or building a parking lot.

As many know, the University is in the midst of a vast transformation. Our vision is to build a world-class research university of sufficient quality and magnitude to move Arkansas forward economically and culturally.

In addition to historic preservation, or preservation and refitting of older buildings for new uses, the University must consider a number of critical issues. These factors include finding appropriate space for academic programs in almost every area of campus; addressing the resource needs of our teaching and research programs; expanding our housing in a way that enables the University to advance its goal of student growth (from 16,035 this year to 22,500 by 2010), as well as a concomitant growth in faculty and staff; accommodating our severe parking needs while attending to related safety issues for both pedestrians and vehicles.

Indeed, inadequate parking has been a leitmotif of campus life here and on every major university campus for the last half century. Recall the characterization of the modern university by Clark Kerr in his 1963 Godkin Lectures at Harvard as "a collection of individual faculty entrepreneurs united by a common grievance over parking."

Growth is particularly acute on the Northwest Quadrant of campus, near which the 4-H House is situated. Currently, the University has under construction a $46 million 600-bed residence hall complex, consisting of four buildings. In addition, the new Pat Walker Health Center is soon to be built adjacent to this complex. Part of this redevelopment includes a widening of Garland Avenue, the major approach to campus from the north, into a four lane roadway with a tree-lined median.

The 4-H House property will provide the optimal site for the vastly increased parking we will need in this quadrant of campus - as a parking lot initially, but soon as a parking deck that can hold 1,000 vehicles. This parking site provides quick access and close convenience to students, faculty, and staff, as well as safe, convenient corridors to pedestrian cross-walks leading to the Northwest Quadrant. It is, in a word, the perfect location for a parking facility that will accommodate the rapid growth of our campus.

Conversely, there are numerous drawbacks to preserving the structure. Renovating for academic use is not as high a priority for resources as renovating some of the core academic buildings on campus such as Vol Walker Hall and the Chemistry Building. Both of these have specific academic uses and are more historically significant than the 4-H House. Add to that the additional $2.3 million that would be required to renovate the 4-H House, as opposed to $80,000 for demolishing it, and we would be faced with extraordinary costs for bringing a marginally useful and rather small building up to code.

At a time when our campus has incurred $9 million in cuts to our state appropriation over the last two years, in addition to increased costs for natural gas, for faculty and staff health insurance, and other uncontrollable costs, the renovation of this building would represent unwise stewardship of our very limited resources; keep in mind that it would also defer funds for other, more urgent, renovation projects.

A final observation: More than half of the buildings and structures that once stood on our campus are gone. No campus can preserve everything (nor is everything worth preserving) and hope to remain relevant to the ever-unfolding future. Indeed, the ambitious but unrealized 1925 campus master plan by architects Jamieson and Spearl, approved by the Futrall administration, called for the demolition of every existing building—including Old Main and Carnall Hall—to make way for a stunningly beautiful Collegiate Gothic campus. Certainly, our campus must preserve and maintain its major historic buildings, but it must also make equally wise decisions about what is worth giving up to make way for the larger, better university that will affect generations of students and move Arkansas forward in the century ahead.