College Avenue closure adopted by City Council

In a special meeting in which rollcall and the “Pledge of Allegiance” probably lasted about as long as the evening’s business, the Greencastle City Council nonetheless enacted a historic decision.

By a vote of 5-1, the Council adopted on second and final reading Ordinance 2019-2, permanently vacating a portion of South College Avenue between Hanna and Olive streets for improvements to the DePauw University campus.

After Mayor Bill Dory read the ordinance by title only, asking for any “last-minute discussion or clarifications,” Councilor Stacie Langdon made the motion for approval, seconded by Dave Murray. Also casting affirmative votes were Councilmen Adam Cohen, Gary Lemon and Mark Hammer.

Councilman Steve Fields, as he had at the April 11 meeting, uttered the only opposition.

The only four persons in the audience for the public meeting were representing the university, which plans to make the section of South College Avenue into a pedestrian plaza, as it did when the section of College Avenue between Hanna and Seminary streets was closed in the 1980s and ultimately became Burkhart Walk.

Although the meeting was adjourned after just three minutes at 8:33 p.m., DePauw officials were then asked how soon the project would begin.

Warren Whitesell, associate vice president of facilities management at DePauw, said bids for the work are set to go out with the project likely to start in mid-June, giving the university time to complete the College Avenue work by the start of fall classes.

As part of the project, DePauw will improve stormwater drainage in the area, which has flooded numerous times in the past, including an incident in which stormwater damaged the Green Center for Performing Arts.

At the April 11 meeting, City Council members noted that DePauw’s agreement to attend to that project, and its liability for the infrastructure forevermore -- all spelled out in a 55-page memorandum of understanding between the city and the university -- would likely save the city somewhere between $500,000 and $750,000.

“To me,” Council President Cohen said at the time, “it’s just a financial issue with almost no bearing on the people who live there or our transportation flow in the city.”

That section of College Avenue is not heavily traveled by local residents, it was noted. The 20 parking spaces along College Avenue will be more than replaced by additional parking DePauw will provide in the adjacent area.

Meanwhile, the issue of safety was also raised by Councilor Langdon.

“Every time I go down that stretch of College Street, I see students crossing the road from all different angles,” she said. “There’s always activity, people coming and going. We said in an earlier meeting, ‘Safety trumps everything,’ so I think we need to do it for that reason also.”

The College Avenue project is an element of a five-year plan DePauw has in place for revitalizing the campus South Quad. It will include the building of a new first-year student residence hall at the southwest corner of Locust and Olive streets that will be available for occupancy in the fall 2020.

That is to be the first phase of a project that will then see Hogate Hall (at Locust and Howard streets) razed and replaced by another new dorm. Following the Hogate demolition, Humbert Hall and Bishop Roberts Hall will endure the same fate. After they are taken down and replaced, Longden Hall will also meet its demise.

The project will take five buildings in which DPU first-year students currently reside and replace them with four state-of-the-art four-story structures, resulting in a first-year dormitory capacity of 650 students that exceeds the current 560-580 limit.