HOUSING, ACADEMIC BUILDINGS INCLUDED IN SEMO OPTION PLAN

Parking structures, student housing around Wildwood, new academic buildings -- they are all components of a long-term plan for upgrading the Southeast Missouri State University campus.

Scheme D, the master-plan option recently presented to the university's Board of Regents by consultants Mackey Mitchell Zahner, calls for maintaining a compact campus while allowing for expansion, creating quadrangles and greens to link the campus with pedestrian-scaled open space, limiting vehicular traffic and improving student safety.

Becky Zahner, a principal with the consultant firm, said the university's current need for some 40,000 square feet of classroom space will be mostly met when the new Dempster Hall is completed. The rest of the space needs can be met by renovating existing facilities.

Additional academic space also can be created by constructing an academic building on the site occupied by Dearmont Hall, Zahner said.

Components of the plan include:

-- Developing a student center, including food services, student government and activity offices, a lounge, bookstore and textbook services.

-- Renovating Academic Hall to house academic space and a one-stop student service center to provide admissions, financial-aid, registrar, bursar's and other services now housed in Academic.

-- Renovating the University Center as a visitors information center, conference center and academic space to serve prospective students, outreach programs and summits on campus.

-- Constructing a visitors booth at the intersection of Henderson and Normal to guide visitors to adjacent parking and campus destinations.

-- Constructing student housing with Wildwood as the centerpiece around a central green space. Wildwood, now the university president's home, would be renovated to accommodate meetings, alumni functions and other events, and the new buildings would be "tucked into the landscape" and designed and scaled to complement Wildwood.

-- Developing new athletic and recreation fields on the north end of the campus, including two recreational-intramural soccer and softball fields, one intercollegiate softball field, one intercollegiate soccer field, parking and concessions.

To improve the campus transit plan, the university is seeking federal funding to allow for construction of a storage and operations facility on the Washington Street parking lot east of the campus.

The plan calls for putting parking and recreational areas on the perimeter of the campus to allow the "campus core" to be dedicated to academic and student services, said Kevin King, a project planner for Mackey Mitchell Zahner.

Dr. Ken Dobbins, executive vice president, said, "The ability to tie the campus together and to have good areas for additional space for both academic and student centers and student service functions are important."

The plan should also help university officials determine the order in which existing buildings should be renovated to provide for additional space, which Scheme D provides, he said.

"This plan can go from this summer to 15, 20 years out. As the campus and campus community expand, we're going to need more space," Dobbins said. "This gives us an option to do that in a very rational way so that we don't put a parking lot or a building in, and then three years later have to tear them down."

The final plan will be presented in June to meet the goals of the regents' campus master plan, he said.