Thursday, March 29, 2007

UIUC Southern Expansion Planning Data

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The land that the south farms now occupy is going to be developed by the University in a business park fashion. There will be few parking garages and large expanses of asphalt. The only facilities that will be of interest to the average student [circulating through or around the cemetery] will be a hotel and conference center, olympic sports stadium, and an academic administration building. It could even be argued that the average student will use none of these [hence the groundskeeper's statement dismissing our speculations].

The buildings will be built by UIUC [leaving them with a mortgage payment] and loaned to occupants on 50 or 100 year loans [typ.]. Tenants will pay this loan and will not have to pay a property tax [as UIUC does not pay any]. With this formula there will be no profit made by the university [to go towards tuition, renovations, etc.]

The grade drops some 30 feet from St. Mary's Road to its southern border, the southernmost superblock resides in a 100 year floodplain.

The original planning for the south farm expansion included a links style golf course. This was dismissed because of the extreme chemicals necessary for golf course grooming. A local watershed board observed that all of this runoff would end up in the river that runs to the south.

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