FeedBU plans to exploit neighborhood
March 29, 2006 in Local Tags: Arbor District, Bradley University
Sometimes I’m so smart I scare myself. A week ago, I predicted that
I wonder if the BU-can-do-no-wrong crowd is going to send hate mail to the Journal Star’s Dave Reynolds for writing an article that confirms what I wrote:
PEORIA - Reaching the Sweet 16 of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament may soon yield a sweet facility deal for all of Bradley University athletics.
The timetable for breaking ground for the school’s long-proposed, on-campus recreation and athletics-training facilities has taken a big leap forward since the Braves’ improbable tournament run this month.
“We have a lot of work to do and are a little ways away from making an announcement, but we are reaping the benefits of Bradley basketball,” said BU executive director of development Tom Hammerton. “We’re in the process of trying to solidify some major gifts and we’re having some success.
[snip]
“Bradley is crunched for space and it’s not like we can build a new facility in addition to Robertson. Look at Bradley’s facilities and then look at any other private institution we’re competing with and we all know we’re deficient. We need to narrow that gap right now.”
So where in the world could BU possibly build new facilities? Hmmmm. Perhaps on Maplewood right across the street from the fieldhouse. Just as it says on the map.
But what do I know? I’m just a paranoid blogger with too much time on his hands and a hatred of big institutions.
Or so I’m told.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:14 am
“I’m just a paranoid blogger with too much time on his hands and a hatred of big institutions.”
And no spel chekr.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:58 am
It’s good to see that BU is finally doing this. I wish it would have been there when I was there.
March 29th, 2006 at 11:23 am
Sometimes you are not so smart. They will tear down the Robertson Fieldhouse and build it on that location. The map clearly shows a building that is sooooo not the current field house. And the map shows the border of BU’s property (the purple line) where it currently stands - and all those houses on the east side of Maplewood Ave are OUTSIDE of the purple line.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Read the map again, follow Maplewood from the other side of Main and the tell me where it goes on Bradleys side of Main….. no more maplewood, just a parking deck.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
Notice also that maplewood is now a court and does not extend to Main, the row of houses you see nearest Bradley are the houses on Cooper and the structures behind the are the garages. There are no houses left on Maplewood in the map referenced.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
You need to read the map that you posted. The new facilities are in the SAME PLACE as the Fieldhouse is, and not only that, they are smaller.
BU is not talking about moving mens Bball to campus. They are talking about expanding their athletic/fitness facility (Haussler Hall) and demoing the fieldhouse to make way for a smaller yet more functional fieldhouse. By having more modern facilites they would be able to serve the students (not just the athletes) better.
Look at the map. They are talking about one more street past where the boundary is now. Not a huge neighborhood take-over.
Lets use facts to back up our fears.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
Cara and Tony: Take another look at the map. Find the street labled Maplewood. (the name is partially obscured by trees). You can clearly see that there is a student activity center where the Fieldhouse currently sits and a parking deck and student housing on the other side of Maplewood, where now sits privately owned homes. You are both confusing Maplewood with the alley that runs north-south sandwished between Maplewood and Cooper.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Did you read my post (not Caras)?
That’s what I said: 1 more street past their current boundary. Not a big deal. Not huge takeovers. Not huge crowds coming to a huge arena.
I still, for the life of me, cannot understand how you think that Bradley doing a little expansion (yes, one extra street is a little) in the next 10-15 years is bad. So far you haven’t made your point.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
check your typos. your posts make no sense with all the missing words.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
One street at a time they built it one street at a time….. give em an inch and they will ram all 3 right up your **s …..
March 29th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Opus: When you find the missing words, let me know. What is this, a grammar lesson? Of course, when you have no point to make, it is much easier to attack the words (this includes Vonster as well).
Rauol: At 1 street per 10-15 years, you will probably be dead before they get to three. In the mean time, Peoria will have swallowed up all the available land in all the directions they can go and will have 20,000 less people than it does now. Not to mention that ALL of the land up there used to belong to Lydia Moss Bradley, so to say that “they” built it one street at a time is bogus. The land was Bradley’s to begin with and “they” sold it off one street at a time. If Bradley can be faulted for anything, it would be for subdividing the land in the first place.
March 29th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Tony: In all fairness, I did leave a couple out, but went back and put ‘em in again.
March 29th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
I guess I don’t get why anybody would be upset at losing some rental houses. The owners are getting more than market price.
How often does a $60 million dollar project go off in Peoria without public assistance?
Anybody that was out last Thursday or the weekend before got to see how a good basketball team helps the local economy.
March 29th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Clayton: I’ve done some original reporting on this story, and interviewed the people who live in and around Maplewood. Many of these homes are owner occupied. They love their old and historic homes and don’t want to be forced out by the blockbusting tactics BU is using.
March 29th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
BU is not using any blockbusting tactics. In the end, the homeowners discover that in reality they like the 2x the value of their house more than they do their house.
Its not blockbusting, its economics.
March 29th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
You talk about history of the houses, I talk about history of the Field House. I’d be more worried about losing that Peoria icon than losing a few houses…your all for District 150 providing a quality education, but 100% against higher education. Just because you wouldn’t use a fitness facility does not mean a majority of students wouldn’t. Bradley is very far behind when compared to other Valley schools. Hell, I’d love to see BU come back to campus for Men’s BB games. Maybe then they’d get a strong student following instead of the 150 year-old men that go to games.
March 29th, 2006 at 10:54 pm
When SIU built it’s athletic facility in Carbondale, there was a lot of hoopla about how many students it would benefit. The reality was that number of students taking advantage of it, fell way way below expectations. The facility became a collossal money sink and a drain upon academic coffers that continues to this day. They even tried to open it up to Carbondale residents. Didn’t help.
ISU has had a rough history in that direction as well.
Being ‘behind’ might be the smartest move Bradley could do.
March 30th, 2006 at 2:18 am
Tony: My bad. You did read the map correctly.
March 30th, 2006 at 7:47 am
As “Not for Profits”, ie. Hospitals, BU, churches, etc. expand and gobble up property in either small bites or big chunks, they no longer pay real estate property taxes for basic essential services that they use. Who picks up the loss of revenues???????? We do !
The property around large institutions offen loses ability to support quality single family home ownership because of the pressures brought on by the nearby institution. parking, noise, commotion……… In the case of BU, pressure is put on surrounding property to fill off-campus student housing desires…… student lifestyles are not truly compatible with owner occupants and owners leave and more absentee investmernt occurs. The desire and concept behind Insitutional Zoning and long range planning was to establish boundaries between institutions an surrounding neighborhoods These boundary with the uses developed were to provide for residential stability and quality owner occupied neighborhoods. Slamming high impact uses around perimeter, where ever the perimeter is, or how slow or fast perimeter is growing will only de-stabilize the surrounding owner occupied neighborhoods and accelerate the cycle of expansion.
The “growth” needs to provide a stable quailty of life and trust for continued owner occupancy and my fear is BU putting 10 pounds in a 5 pound area will only add fuel to the dis-investment of surrounding owner occupied neighborhoods at the same time reducing the revenue stream to provide the basic services that are desired and needed by both BU and the surrounding residential neighborhoods.
March 30th, 2006 at 7:59 am
The rec center at Bradley is a far cry from that at SIU, having attended SIU I can say that the center there was heavily used by the student body. It provides a number of things to the community as well that simply would not be available from the private sector in a town the size of Carbondale. We are not in the same situation in Peoria as most of the things provided at the SIU center are already available in multiples from the Park District. Bradley is actually scaling down their facilities in the new cwnter and there will not be nearly the quality or size of facilities at the new center that they currently have at Hausler, small non-competitiion size pool, less gym space ect.
March 30th, 2006 at 9:10 am
Gary: Do the math. How much revenue is the COP losing from one street worth of houses valued at MAYBE $90k each? Not much.
Rauol: Bradley is nearly tripling the size of the facility that holds sports offices, fitness center, the pool, workout rooms, locker rooms, etc. It’s the fieldhouse that will be smaller because the existing one is an incredible waste of space for what they do with it. They don’t need a 7000 seat fieldhouse when Men’s BB is the only thing that needs that much seating (actually it needs more). So a smaller fieldhouse, but a bigger athletic facility that serves ALL of the students. What is your current knowledge of Bradley’s facilites? Are you making assumptions based on a map?
March 30th, 2006 at 9:26 am
We are losing ALL of it along with School District 150, and rest of the taxing bodies. Except what we and they have to do is raise the taxes on everyone else which gives those another complaint and then they also can move to surrounding communities, drive into Peoria to see a ball game, watch the Rivermen, or park in a City sibsidized parking deck to work and then escape back to their safe environons.
And you missed the point that where ever “the map” puts the boundaries if the non paying triple sized use creates more instability, property values go down, investers show up and the cycle perpetuates
March 30th, 2006 at 11:01 am
How much actual $$ are you losing? Knowing what the property taxes are, it looks to me like all totaled there is about $100k annual tax revenue from those properties, split up amongst HOW MANY governmental entities.
So far the reasons to be against this are not adding up.C(
March 30th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Gary:
You lose a street of dilapidated housing (and the taxes) but forget about how much you GAIN with every acre of farmland that is annexed and turned into subdivisions on the outskirts of town.
Gary also sez: “Except what we and they have to do is raise the taxes on everyone else which gives those another complaint and then they also can move to surrounding communities, drive into Peoria to see a ball game, watch the Rivermen, or park in a City sibsidized parking deck to work and then escape back to their safe environons”
It wasn’t taxes that drove me out of Peoria. It was the crime and the schools.
March 30th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
Yes I have specific knowledge of the interior layout of the new building, the pool will be very small compared to the 6 lane competion pool that is currently housed at hausler, there will be much more office space. Keep in mind when you look at the short term map that a big chunk of hausler is already removed, the pool will be torn off this fall. I am not against expansion, I think the obvious best solution would have been for Bradley to negotiate the purchase and demolition of campustown ( I know expensive) and then for the buzzword district people to work with the businesses to relocate on to and help renovate main street. I hate to see the expansion occur into a neighborhood when it possibly could go the other direction.
March 30th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Rauol, as someone who is also an Alumn of SIU… and who spent several years after graduating, working down there, I have to disagree with you. The Rec Center was a black hole in the budget. When we left the area, they were talking about possibly closing the place.
March 30th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
If you look at what they want to do with the acquired houses, it is to build parking.
Parking for who? Don’t tell me Bradley wants to encourage the students to drive from St. James to the rec center? We have enough traffic already, k thx. For faculty? Bradley wants to encourage its faculty to live farther away? So much for being available to their students. The public? Pfft.
Why the parking? We are supposed to be encouraging less parking, more pedestrian friendly area. Building parking garages does not work to that end. Every parking space is an enabler for someone to live farther and farther away.
So Bradley wants to encourage their students to drive around. Fair enough. What is so wrong with the Rec Plex down along the river? Last heard it was under utilized. Why build a redundant facility when one already exists?
March 30th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
I would imagine that the parking is not for the students, but for women’s BBall and other sports held at the new fieldhouse. Right now, all parking for those events in on streets, in neighborhoods.
This would be good for the neighbors, right?
March 30th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
The neighbors are perfectly fine with people parking along the streets during events. Always have been. They are public streets after all. That is the whole point of a pedestrian friendly area. Walking a couple blocks isn’t going to hurt you. It has been perfectly fine for many years.
March 30th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Who cares about Maplewood? When are they going to buy my house on Cooper. It would make better sense to just take all the properties over to Western Avenue. They could build a new basketball stadium and rec center and have plenty of room for parking and housing. Then Bradley wouldn’t have to deal with the numbskills at the Civic Center. Since the tax that was created for that moneypit will never ever never ever expire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
March 30th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
Forgot to mention Maplewood is in Manual’s district, right?
What kind of people that could actually afford a house there would want their kids to go to Manual?
March 30th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
Ryan, I think I’ve answered this before. Yes, you can have good money AND raise kids in this area. Many Many people do.
It’s called Private Schooling.
March 30th, 2006 at 8:15 pm
So, is Bradley who rents all those homes on Maplewood now, will they have to apply for the Manning proposed \