Indiana Ag Connection - Redevelopment Moves Forward with Help from Landscape Architect

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Redevelopment Moves Forward with Help from Landscape Architect
Indiana Ag Connection - 08/25/2016

For Landscape Architecture graduate Eric Lucas, BS'97, a vision of the future begins with some thoughts about the past.

Sitting in a quiet, red brick coffee house looking out on the slowly gentrifying business district of downtown West Lafayette, Lucas, a Lafayette native, remembers when tow lots and junk yards lined the Wabash riverfront and a seemingly endless stream of traffic sped along the major state highway that divided the city and its campus.

As a pedestrian, just crossing State Street was an adventure.

"We called it 'playing Frogger,'" he said, referring to the 1990s video game where the goal was to maneuver a pixilated amphibian across a busy roadway without getting squished by onrushing traffic.

"It wasn't as much fun as it sounds," he adds, shaking his head with a slim hint of a smile.

Flash forward 20 years to 2016.

The tow lots and junk yards are gone, replaced by a scenic nature trail along the river and a picturesque pedestrian bridge overlooking a refurbished railroad depot. What was once a scene of urban blight now looks more like a model train layout.

Eric Lucas, shown here on the State Street median on campus, maintains links with his school as a member of Purdue's Landscape Architecture Advisory Council. Photo by Tom Campbell Lucas, principal and director of the Indianapolis offices of MKSK, an urban design and landscape architecture firm, is helping to lead a redevelopment project intended to transform State Street from a congested, four-lane highway into a tree-lined, pedestrian-friendly main street.

"I have seen a lot of different iterations of State Street over the years," he said. "My personal perspective as a native of the area and a Purdue graduate has helped to an extent during this project, but you try to put that aside and bring a fresh perspective based on what the community needs for the future."

The State Street project began to take shape in 2013 when the university, the city of West Lafayette and the Purdue Research Foundation formed a partnership to create a master plan for redeveloping the corridor.

Until then, State Street - also known as state Highway 26 - had been a major east-west state artery through western Indiana. It carried both local traffic - commuters in cars and buses - and big rigs hauling freight from Indianapolis to Chicago and back again.

The high traffic volume and speed made life difficult for anyone trying to cross the road, even if they were just trying to get from one campus building to another.

"In the 1990s, the state installed wide medians to try to make crossing easier," Lucas said. "You'd get halfway across and then have to dodge traffic again."

Installing the medians also meant that the traffic lanes had to be widened so that speeding traffic was just inches from pedestrians standing on sidewalks.

"You'd have to stand back a few feet or risk being sideswiped by someone's rearview mirror," Lucas said.

The university and city couldn't do much to improve the situation since the road was under state control.

With the completion of the state Highway 231 bypass diverting traffic around campus, however, State Street was no longer needed as a major throughway. Control reverted to the city of West Lafayette and planners began to consider their options. The master plan was finalized in 2014 with what Lucas describes as "great support from the broader West Lafayette community."

"The question was, if we took the majority of through traffic off, what could we do with State Street? We had to develop an idea of what the corridor could be," Lucas said. "It was a new opportunity for everybody. For the city of West Lafayette, it was a great opportunity to reinforce its business district. And for the university, it was a great opportunity to unite its campus."

The State Street project became one part of a larger master plan to integrate the campus more closely with the surrounding community and provide Purdue with a new "front door," something Lucas says it had never had before.

"There was nothing to indicate that you had arrived on campus," he said. "You would go through an intersection and all of a sudden realize, 'Oh, I guess I'm here.' There was no real university gateway."

The top priority in the master plan was to make the roadway safer for pedestrians and drivers. A second critical goal was to tie the campus together -- from the emerging Innovation District in the west to downtown West Lafayette in the east.

"You have this dumbbell effect," Lucas said, holding his fists about two feet apart to indicate the two centers of development at each end of the corridor.

As the master plan came together, two themes emerged - improving the quality of campus life and driving economic growth.

"The aesthetics will certainly be improved," Lucas said.

He shuffles through a stack of artists' renderings showing wider, tree-lined sidewalks, ample greenspace and bike paths - a pleasant boulevard rather than a stark and potentially hazardous highway.

"Our plan is to squeeze the street down, moving the sidewalks closer together," he said. "The crosswalks will be shorter and there will be a number of new crossings."

The project is scheduled to be completed in 2018.

MKSK was hired as the lead consultant to craft a visionary yet realistic plan for a new State Street. As project lead, Lucas's first job was to build consensus.

"In developing the master plan, we relied heavily on input from stakeholders - the city, the university, business owners and residents," he said. "We met with five stakeholder focus groups four times each. We conducted online surveys. We had numerous one-on-one meetings. There is no perfect plan for everyone but we had a lot of support."

Rob Sovinski, professor and chair of Purdue's nationally recognized Landscape Architecture program, said Lucas was especially well prepared to help manage such a complex project.

"A landscape architect as to be both left-brained and right-brained," Sovinski said. "Like many successful students in our program, Eric understands the aesthetics of a project but is also able to roll up his sleeves and tackle the technical issues."

Sovinski said the program's challenging curriculum is designed to help students develop the artistic and technical skills employers are looking for. Students are required to complete a one-year professional internship followed by a capstone project that incorporates all phases of project management from design through construction.

"That's the type of practical experience they'll need as professionals in a highly competitive environment," Sovinski said.

Lucas said the partnership between the university and the surrounding community has been critical as the State Street project has moved from the drawing board to reality.

"It made the whole process run much more smoothly. It's not easy making changes to the way things are and how people move around, but we knew everyone was invested and that made a huge difference."

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