In a survey this spring, students at the University of Washington Tacoma were asked to list ways that UWT could be a better school.

At the top of the list? “Build dormitories.”

“They want a college experience, and living in dorms is a big part of that,” said Mike Wark, UWT’s interim vice chancellor for advancement.

“That’s a direction that was not intended when plans for this campus were originally set out,” he said.

The state’s vision for the UWT campus has changed dramatically since the 1990s, when expectations were for a mostly upper-division, commuter school. The new plans need space, raising concerns that the school’s existing footprint – set more than a decade ago – might not be big enough.

Two weeks ago, at a budget planning session before the Washington Higher Education Coordinating Board, UW President Mark Emmert outlined a plan that would double the enrollment at the Tacoma and Bothell branches over the next decade.

Overall, the UW system wants to make room for 6,000 more undergraduates by 2017. Of those, 3,350 would go to Tacoma. (Long range, the university’s goal for Tacoma is at least 10,000 full-time students, 1,250 of whom would live on campus.)

The needs of undergraduates – dorms, dining halls, an athletic field, health facilities, not to mention classrooms – are pushing the limits of the 46-acre rectangle drawn for the campus in downtown Tacoma.

“The amount of space we have is not sufficient for what we want to do,” said UWT Chancellor Patricia Spakes.

“We did a survey to see if we could find a campus anywhere in the country with 46 acres and 10,000 students,” Spakes said. “We couldn’t find one.”

UWT admitted its first freshman class of 150 students in 2006. This fall, for the first time, it will offer on-campus housing to two dozen students and hopes to start building a residence hall to accommodate 200 to 300 students within the next two or three years.

“The size of the Tacoma campus is already severely limited,” said Steve Kennard, assistant director of asset management at the UW Real Estate Office in Seattle. “Every time you build a residence hall, that’s less space.”

The square on the map measures 46 acres, but Spakes notes that by no means all of that is usable space. The most recent version of the campus master plan calls for keeping Market Street open to vehicle traffic through the campus, which further reduces room. “It’s a 46-acre footprint, but we actually have only 33 buildable acres,” Spakes said.

By way of comparison, the University of Puget Sound has 2,700 students on its 97-acre campus in north Tacoma. Pacific Lutheran University has 3,600 students on 126 acres.

LAND WITHIN THE FOOTPRINT

The reality is that UWT does not have even that much space. While the intended footprint measures 46 acres, the state owns only about 70 percent of that. UWT is the only public university in the state that does not own its entire footprint.

“What typically happens when you start a new university is you buy somebody’s farm,” Spakes said. “We’re trying to insert one into an already existing community. That’s a totally different animal.”

Acquiring squares in the checkerboard of ownership within the footprint has been a time-consuming, frustrating business – for landowners as well as the school.

The state promised UWT $20 million to buy property but never specified the rate at which the money would be parceled out.

Every biennium, school officials wait to see what the Legislature will come up with for land acquisition and funding for construction.

UWT’s timeline for development, Wark says, only half joking, is “two years.” Then he adds, “And two years. And two years. And two years.”

That incremental process has challenged architects and planners who are struggling to put together efficient, cost-effective models for traffic flow and utility corridors.

“I think the general population seems to think we have a piggy bank that we can just dip into whenever a property becomes available,” Spakes said. “In fact, we have to go to the Legislature. It’s a real challenge to match the legislative funding with the availability of property.”

As a result, the UW’s real estate negotiators are engaged in a delicate dance with remaining inholders. The school doesn’t want the owners to develop their property because it would interfere with the master plan. Yet they don’t have the money to buy it.

THE FAWCETT PROPERTY

A case in point: On July 15, the school at last closed a deal on a half-acre parcel that used to hold a rundown apartment building called Fawcett House, which burned in December 2006.

The sale marked the end of a long acquisition saga. The Fawcett property was owned in part by a Tacoma-based development company called the Gintz Group, which wanted to build an eight-story condominium building there with retail on the ground floor. The university said that was incompatible with its plans. Stopping the project and acquiring the property took two years, two legislative acts and a purchase price of $1.5 million.

“We were not at all trying to be obstructionist,” said Ron Gintz, the firm’s chief operating officer. “We just found ourselves with a piece of property that, quite frankly, we didn’t know was on the university footprint.

“All of a sudden we found there were 800-pound gorillas that didn’t want it to be developed.”

After the condo idea failed, the Gintz Group proposed a five- to eight-story assisted living facility for seniors, a plan the school liked even less.

“We just kept running into dead ends,” Gintz said. “It was years before they planned to get into that corner of the property. We were dead in the water.”

“They really felt they needed to be in total control of the property, which I certainly respect,” Gintz said. “But it makes it difficult for property owners.”

The Gintz Group eventually went away happy with the purchase agreement, and Gintz now says he completely understands the university’s predicament.

“Based on any other footprint of any other campus, it’s pathetically small,” he said. “It puts them at a huge disadvantage. They’re going to have to go up rather than out.”

BUILD UP?

Building up is an option, but university officials don’t like it for several reasons.

“People say, ‘Just build up. Why not 20-story buildings?’” Spakes said. “There are many problems with that. Universities are all about creating a sense of community, and that is very easily destroyed.”

There are also safety issues with having students 20 stories up, Spakes said, and scheduling problems caused by waiting for elevators.

“Our architects tell us five stories are really about the maximum if you want to maintain community,” Spakes said.

The most recent version of the UWT master plan calls for new construction to be built to an average of four stories. The plan puts forth the possibility of 20-story towers along Tacoma Avenue, which would house classrooms on the lower floors and offices and housing above.

SIX VACANT ACRES

One tantalizing option for the school is 6.2 acres of vacant, city-owned property immediately south of the campus. That land, intended for a new police headquarters that instead went to South Pine Street, has become an accidental greenbelt, lush with blackberry vines and wildflowers.

In 2005, there were informal talks with the city about UWT leasing the land and then owning it once it had paid market value. That deal foundered amid disagreements over whether it was in the city’s best economic interest to give the school a break on the land or sell it to private developers for more immediate profit.

The city’s interest in a sweetheart deal with the university does not seem to have picked up since.

“My first hope would be that we would be able to return that property to the tax rolls,” said Tacoma City Councilman Mike Lonergan. “We ought to put it out there and see who is interested.”

“At the same time, I would be very sensitive to not in any way blocking the growth of UW Tacoma,” Lonergan said. “I’d be interested in hearing what their needs are, but, all things being equal, if there’s a way that we can attract some basic industry jobs there and bring in tax revenue for the citizens, that would be my first choice.”

Ryan Petty, director of the City of Tacoma’s Community and Economic Development Department, said it would be inappropriate for him to express a personal opinion about how the 6.2 acres should be developed, since that will be a City Council decision.

However, he noted that the university has been a powerful catalyst for economic growth and that he expects that to continue.

“Everyone who’s looked at it has concluded that the University of Washington has had an enormous impact on the renaissance of downtown Tacoma,” Petty said. “It has helped change the way corporations look at a South Sound location.”

“The university adds to our ability to attract and retain key talent,” Petty said, “and talent is a driver of corporate location decisions.”

Chancellor Spakes says acquiring land within the university’s 46-acre footprint gives her enough to worry about, without getting too excited at this point about land outside. “We can’t go to the state and ask for money to buy land outside the footprint,” she said.

If an offer came up, however, Spakes said, “We wouldn’t refuse to talk.”

“I wouldn’t want to go down in history as the chancellor who had a chance to expand the footprint of this campus and failed to do it.”

COMBINED INTERESTS

What appears more likely at this point, university officials say, are public/private partnerships on property surrounding the school.

There is no reason, Spakes said, that private developers couldn’t provide some of the facilities and services that the incoming students will need.

That could mean private fitness centers instead of a university gym, private apartments instead of upper-division housing, restaurants instead of dining halls.

Ysabel Trinidad, UWT’s vice chancellor for administrative services, says those sorts of arrangements are in the best traditions of urban universities and what helps give value to the larger community.

“The university should be a distinct place within the city, but integrated into it,” Trinidad said.

The lines on the map defining the UWT footprint may look like a wall, she said, but that is not at all what is intended.

The idea is to maintain the campus’ urban character not only through architecture (aligning development predominantly with the street grid, for example) but also by embracing and integrating itself with private commerce.

“You need to keep the porousness,” Trinidad said. “The campus is really a hybrid. It’s part of the city grid but a little bit of an oasis, with areas of green space and a different character.”

Rob Carson: 253-597-8693

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The University of Washington Tacoma campus sits on fewer acres than other colleges both bigger and smaller.

SCHOOL CITY ENROLLMENT SIZE

UW Tacoma Tacoma 10,000

(projected) 46 acres

UW Seattle Seattle 40,218 643 acres

University of Puget Sound Tacoma 2,700 97 acres

Pacific Lutheran University Parkland 3,600 126 acres

Northeastern University Boston 20,500 67 acres

Columbia University New York 25,500 299 acres

Harvard University Cambridge, Mass. 19,000 380 acres

Academic buildings 1,700,000 square feet

Residential facilities 530,000 square feet

Parking 1,000,000 square feet

Outdoor Spaces (covered and uncovered) 140,000 square feet

Total 3,370,000 square feet

CURRENT TOTAL SIZE 438,000 square feet