Take tour of new campus corridor |
| Meet me on MainStreet |
| by
John Bach |
| Tour MainStreet
Opened in 2006: Campus Rec. Center Flash photo tour Varsity Village Flash photo tour Opened
in 2004:
|
The heart of West Campus is open again and alive with more activity and energy than ever.
After three years of watching the
massive transformation through construction fences, faculty, staff and
students are finally getting a chance to stroll down the University of
Cincinnati's new MainStreet. In fact, they aren't just passing through.
They are stopping, eating, gathering, taking in movies, enjoying art and,
most important, staying after dark.
As hoped, the unveiling of the new elements of MainStreet -- Tangeman
University Center, Joseph Steger Student Life Center and large new open
spaces -- has sparked a complete makeover of the social culture at UC.
In addition to opening up countless new opportunities for gathering between
classes, the MainStreet concept is moving UC away from its old commuter-campus
mentality and toward a 24-hour community. It has given students, groups
and campus organizations a brand new venue to assemble for social activities,
entertainment, meals or just a quiet place to study.
MainStreet, a merging of both conceptual and physical changes, is the
$233 million student life portion of UC's 15-year-old Master Plan to reinvent
the campus. Opened with a gala celebration following UC president Nancy
Zimpher's inauguration, MainStreet is actually not a street at all, but
a pedestrian-friendly district where both architecture and programming
encourage interaction outside the lecture hall.
The district cuts a diagonal swath through the center of main campus from
University Pavilion near the western edge, through TUC, the Steger Center,
the Campus Recreation Center (still under construction), continuing into
Sigma Sigma Commons and terminating at the Jefferson Residence Complex
on the east. Until recent years, Master Plan projects focused on building
academic facilities, converting land into open green space and developing
a pedestrian-friendly campus. MainStreet, however, represents the Master
Plan's fourth imperative -- quality of life.
"Like cities throughout the nation and the world, our university
community now has a healthy and vital MainStreet,” says Zimpher.
"Our newly modernized Tangeman University Center and our brand new
Joseph Steger Student Life Center once were mere ideas that grew out of
the collective thought of our campus community. Their new and impressive
mark on our landscape today represents a visible testament of the transition
from aspiration to reality."
MainStreet will be complete when the new Campus Recreation Center opens,
but here is your guide to what's open for business now.
NEXT | Begin tour at the Tangeman University Center
LINKS:
MainStreet on the mapMainStreet dollars and designers
