A Matter of Scale - Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas
Situated on 5,200 acres in Brazos County, Texas, A&M University covers so much land that by 2004, university officials began to worry about campus sprawl.
Not too long ago, railroad tracks divided the campus in two, leaving the west campus a haphazard mass of surface parking lots and scattered buildings. The problem would only worsen if unaddressed, and the university didn’t want that to happen as it continued to grow. “We have $884 million worth of construction in the pipeline,” says Steven Hodge, director of special projects for the university’s facilities office. “We wanted to add new buildings in a unified way.”
The university hired an outside consulting firm, Austin’s BGK Architects, to devise a master plan for future growth, including the creation of a design review board and a campus planner position. Major points of the master plan included connecting the two halves of campus via a set of underpasses so students wouldn’t have to cross railroad tracks; increasing building density; redeveloping the main access paths into pedestrian-friendly, tree-lined boulevards; and adding on-campus housing. Additional housing was particularly important as enrollment reached a record high of more than 46,000 students in 2007.
Meanwhile, outside developers created luxury multi-use projects to satisfy the demand for off-campus housing and meet the recreational and retail needs of faculty and staff. Projects include Tower Point, a 75-acre, mixed-use building by Houston’s Weiner Development; 2818 Place, a luxury student apartment project by Atlanta-based Place Properties; and the Woodlands, a 258-unit student community by The Dovetail Cos. of Athens, Ga., which is opening its second phase this fall.
What’s more, the City of College Station contributed to the development boom with a mixed-use retail complex called University Town Center, a 75,000square-foot retail complex with a hotel and conference center that opened last summer.
Overall, it’s a solid foundation to sustain the next few decades of growth.
[ fast facts ]
Texas A&M University
■ Location: College Station, Texas
■ Major developments: The Woodlands; Tower Point; 2818 Place; Crescent Pointe, a master-planned,
mixed-use development on 192 acres
■ Major players: Texas A&M University; City of College Station; McCullough Development
■ Notable: More than half the city’s population—57 percent—is 18- to 24-year-olds. Plus, in the last 12 years, the city has invested more than $25 million in public improvements to the Northgate area adjacent
to the university’s campus. The upgrades include public parking garages, sidewalks, period lighting,
and pedestrian promenades.
