In the next several years, Georgetown hopes to complete a new center for the McDonough School of Business, science center and athletics practice facility. But if you take a walk around, you’ll find that these buildings are set to occupy some of the last viable property on campus.
With Burleith to our north, West Georgetown to our east, the Potomac River to our south and Grover-Archibald Park to our west, there is virtually no room for expansion.
“We’re bound on all four sides here at Georgetown,” said Karen Frank, vice president for facilities and student housing. “We think about the possibility of extra space every day, but our options are limited. … We are running out of space on campus, and we have nowhere to go.”
Frank said the university has often been forced to use all of the available space on rather than expand outward and has resorted to “burying” parking spaces to create more room.
Furthermore, the lease on the Car Barn, which houses classrooms and offices for the MSB as well as graduate programs like the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, is up for renewal. Frank declined to comment on the Car Barn, citing ongoing negotiations.
Based on a university plan that was first proposed in 2000 and approved by the D.C. Board of Zoning Adjustment in 2005, the university’s undergraduate enrollment cap will increase by 389 students from 2000-2010.
Some faculty members said that academic space is running low as the undergraduate population grows.
The Bunn Intercultural Center, which houses many of Georgetown’s academic offices, has been feeling the strain of the university’s limited space for some time. Alfonso Morales-Front, chair of the Spanish and Portuguese department, said that his department feels a “dire need” for more room.
“The problem comes in with the adjuncts and [teaching assistants],” he said. “This is where there is much overcrowding and a lack of space.”
Sometimes, TAs and adjunct professors do not have office access for student meetings, other professors said.
“When a student needs to meet with [a TA], it shouldn’t have to happen in a public space,” said John Tutino, chair of the history department, whose office is also located in the ICC. “A student should be able to have a conversation with a TA or a faculty member where no one can hear it.”
Tutino added that the history department is currently two offices short for tenure track faculty. Soon, he said, this number would be increasing to three.
“It’s hard to make an offer to a brilliant young scholar and say, ‘By the way, you’ll have to share an office,’” he said. “But I would not present ourselves as an extreme case but perhaps as a more typical case.”
Tutino said that it seemed like the university was doing everything possible to create new space in the ICC, including erecting makeshift offices where there is space available. “Find a space, put up some walls, often with no windows anywhere, call it an office. We have a few of those [in our department], and it created some space,” Tutino said.
Previously, GPPI was to be housed in the former Wormley School on Prospect Street, which was owned by the university, but protests from neighborhood residents blocked the renovation of the school. The university bought the historic, red-brick school building in 1997 for administrative and academic use but sold it nine years later, saying it had no immediate plans to employ the space for development.
In 2003, the university completed construction on the Southwest Quadrangle, which includes housing for nearly 800 students as well as O’Donovan Dining Hall and the Wolfington Jesuit Residence.
Ryan Hall, the Mulledy Building and the Gervase Building — three buildings across from Village A — are vacant, with the exception of a few offices in Gervase. Frank said that these spaces require significant renovations.
“These buildings need to be renovated so that they are fully functional, and we need to fundraise for that,” Frank said. “We are confined by the constraints of the architecture of these buildings. They are only so long, only so wide, and we need to update them with things like elevators and improved stairwells.”
Many administrators and professors said they are hopeful that the new MSB and science buildings will help alleviate the space problem. The new science building will house the chemistry and biology departments, with the physics department remaining primarily in Reiss Science Building.
“We’ve been led to understand that when the new business building is done, then perhaps also the science [building], that the current spaces inhabited by the McDonough School will be vacated,” Tutino said. “That will create a domino effect. Space will be vacated, some units will move, and it should create space.”
Frank said that the MSB and science buildings are necessary because of the lack of space on campus.
“We are not building extra buildings, we are building new buildings so that we have adequate space,” she said.