Brown's vision of the future

[Cotuit]

This is interesting:

They also plan to develop a high-rise office building at 1215 South Main St., as current leases expire. The building is owned by Brown.

But as far as I can tell, there is no 1215 South Main Street. There's a 1215 North Main up by Miriam. Are they talking about the Old Stone Building?

The Cable Car for example is 204 S. Main.

[CtownMikey]

sorry for posting this in the 10 actionable issues section

[Frankie811]

This is interesting:

But as far as I can tell, there is no 1215 South Main Street. There's a 1215 North Main up by Miriam. Are they talking about the Old Stone Building?

The Cable Car for example is 204 S. Main.

It's a typo. The building they bought a few months ago is 121 S. Main St.

[Cotuit]

I was hoping they were building a new highrise.

[Frankie811]

I was hoping they were building a new highrise.

I think they should have grabbed parcel 6 which have provided them plenty of land for offices, housing, parking and maybe even a sports facility.

[Frankie811]

Ch 10 reported this morning that Brown U has plans to build a 5 story, 30 million dollar science building. I guess the in progress $95 mil science building isn't big enough.

http://www.turnto10.com/news/5716700/detail.html

"I am opposed to development that is detrimental to the community, environmentally or aesthetically," said Ron Dwight, member of the College Hill Neighborhood Association.

Coletta wanted to move the repair operation of his station to the old Sears Building on North Main, only to discover Brown owns that too, he said, and would not lease him the space.

[gregw]

Sounds like this is the Sydney Frank bldg that was announced several months back. As for No Main, it must be the Sears Automotive bldg, which I know Brown acquired along with the Ethan Allen. They should have leased it to Coletta. Instead, it's just another rotting section of No Main.

Ch 10 reported this morning that Brown U has plans to build a 5 story, 30 million dollar science building. I guess the in progress $95 mil science building isn't big enough.

http://www.turnto10.com/news/5716700/detail.html

"I am opposed to development that is detrimental to the community, environmentally or aesthetically," said Ron Dwight, member of the College Hill Neighborhood Association.

Coletta wanted to move the repair operation of his station to the old Sears Building on North Main, only to discover Brown owns that too, he said, and would not lease him the space.

[Frankie811]

Sounds like this is the Sydney Frank bldg that was announced several months back. As for No Main, it must be the Sears Automotive bldg, which I know Brown acquired along with the Ethan Allen. They should have leased it to Coletta. Instead, it's just another rotting section of No Main.

True, very true. But what are Brown's plan for their N Main St properties?

[gregw]

True, very true. But what are Brown's plan for their N Main St properties?

I don't know if they know. The wheels of bureaucracy at Brown turn very slowly.

[Garris]

I don't get this quote at all:

""All the merchants are all complaining about that the schools getting bigger, and they're getting smaller," Coletta said."

Anyway, a 5 story building is a nice replacement for a gas station, I'd say, which always has felt grossly out of place there on Angell right smack in the middle of the Brown campus. And it's going to be respectfully done, I'm sure, as that will be part of "The Walk" that Brown wants to put through that section of campus.

Frankly, the large science buildings on College Hill don't bother me that much. I really never notice them. They are nicely set back and don't impact the streetscape of Thayer at all. They also have some contextual spires that, from a distance, fit nicely into the spires of nearby houses and churches.

- Garris

[Cotuit]

I don't get this quote at all:

""All the merchants are all complaining about that the schools getting bigger, and they're getting smaller," Coletta said."

I don't either, the merchants are doing something wrong if they can't cash in on all the bodies that Brown brings up the hill.

[Frankie811]

I don't get this quote at all:

Anyway, a 5 story building is a nice replacement for a gas station, I'd say, which always has felt grossly out of place there on Angell right smack in the middle of the Brown campus.

- Garris

Well, they did provide a service to Brown students and faculity and College Hill residents. Besides gas, I believe they did service cars as well. They've been there for years. But progress must be made. Brown needs to grow, expand. How does Brown stand in stature, prominence and acclimation to other Ivy League Universities? I'm sure this all plays a very important roll when recruiting students. Garris would probably be the best one to answer this question.

[Garris]

Well, they did provide a service to Brown students and faculity and College Hill residents. Besides gas, I believe they did service cars as well. They've been there for years. But progress must be made.

There are certainly multiple other service stations around, with 2-3 at the intersection of Hope and Blackstone.

Brown needs to grow, expand. How does Brown stand in stature, prominence and acclimation to other Ivy League Universities?

This is a complicated question. Brown, by any measure, is an elite institution. Amongst the Ivys, however, it's the smallest, has the least graduate programs (no law school, business school, education school, etc), and also has the smallest endowment. Brown's claim to fame academically has been a very liberal/flexible scheduling and major system, although I'm not sure how true this is now. While I don't put a lot of stock in rankings (I think certain places are better fits for certain people), here is the first 15 of the 2006 U.S. News Rankings of nationwide colleges (Ivys bolded):

1 Harvard University (MA)

1 Princeton University (NJ)

3 Yale University (CT)

4 University of Pennsylvania

5 Duke University (NC)

5 Stanford University (CA)

7 California Institute of Technology

7 Massachusetts Inst. of Technology

9 Columbia University (NY)

9 Dartmouth College (NH)

11 Washington University in St. Louis

12 Northwestern University (IL)

13 Cornell University (NY)

13 Johns Hopkins University (MD)

15 Brown University (RI)

This is pretty much how things were when I attended Yale. Traditionally, just as New Haven was always a recruiting problem for Yale, Providence used to be considered the same for Brown. Thankfully for both places, this really isn't nearly as true anymore.

- Garris

[Frankie811]

Traditionally, just as New Haven was always a recruiting problem for Yale, Providence used to be considered the same for Brown.

- Garris

Please expand more on this statement.

[Garris]

Please expand more on this statement.

Very simple... Families are often cross-shopping the Ivys... Harvard, for example, in addition to being Harvard, wows families with the slick, upscale, and safe appearing Harvard Square and Cambridge at large. Princeton and Dartmouth are encased by beautiful, picture-perfect postcard small towns. Columbia has NYC.

Yale, by contrast, in New Haven's worst days (when I happened to be there), was surrounded by a slum to the West, bordered by a Washington St-like Broadway District (their equivalent of Harvard Sq), and to the South was the dangerous feeling NH Green and NH's stone-dead retail district. Families would visit, coming down from Harvard, take a look at the town, and say, "This will make a nice number two choice."

Similarly, I remember myself and friends interviewing at Brown in high school, and driving to the campus through the then frankly scary and dead downtown and having my folks say, "Nope, we don't think so... Uh, uh..." My tour guide at Brown said, "We don't go into the city... Have you ever heard the phrase, 'The armpit of New England?'..."

A bad surrounding community is a nightmare for recruiters. In the several years I've been doing interviewing for Yale, I used to always be asked by students if NH's bad reputation was deserved. And Yale had only itself to blame as, unlike Brown, it owns most of the land in NH! Similarly, boosters of the University of Bridgeport (CT), a respectable school that has seen more prestigious days, directly attribute their problems to the decline of the surrounding city.

Well, in recent years, NH has turned around dramatically. The Broadway area is now gleaming, classy, and modern, a reasonable mini-scale Harvard Square. The slum is now a mainstream residential area, thanks to Yale's homeownership promotion amongst employees and faculty. And downtown is now slick and active, filled with apartments, restaurants, bars, and clubs. I don't get asked about NH anymore by interviewing students.

Similarly, Providence's renaissance can only be a boom, I imagine, for their recruiting. Having a hot, desirable downtown right next door can only make their job 100 times easier. This is why I'm a bit surprised that Brown isn't more publically involved in helping improve the city, and why their seeming neutrality (for example, about the future of Thayer St) is a bit of a mystery to me...

- Garris

[gregw]

I went to Brown for grad school and worked at Harvard for a while. The difference in scale and resources is like night and day.

The entire Brown campus would probably fit onto the campus of Harvard Business School.

This contrast of scale and resources holds true for Yale, Princeton, and Columbia, not to mention some of the non-Ivy powerhouses like Berkeley, MIT, Stanford, etc. In size, Brown is much closer to Dartmouth.

As Garris pointed out, Brown lacks a business and a law school and its medical school is not all that old. This means that there has not been the massive inflow of money from legions of grateful and very wealthy alums that these schools have enjoyed for many years. Also Brown's reputation did not really take off on a national and international scale until the 80s.

Brown's endowment is certainly growing but the other places are not exactly standing still. This discrepancy puts the Brown administration in a kind of dilemma: does Brown try to compete with the major research places like Harvard and Yale albeit by standing out in a few key areas (this is Simmons' strategy) or should it essentially be a liberal arts college with a modest array of grad level programs? This was the idea behind the so-called "University-College" that pretty much characterized the institution going back to the 70s.

I don't know how realistic Brown's current agenda is to hold its own next to the heavyweights, but I admire it for trying.

[Garris]

I don't know how realistic Brown's current agenda is to hold its own next to the heavyweights, but I admire it for trying.

At least on the medical side of things, all I can say is they have a lot of work to do. The new medicine Dean is an extremely bright and quite prominent figure, and I think he understands that consolidating and focusing the University's far flung resources is a way to start.

I think, whether realistic or not, Brown has to take the course they are on. The differences (especially in biomedical sciences and research) between first and second tier institutions is getting greater by the year, and if Brown stands still (or sticks with the status quo of that University-College model from the 70's), they really risk getting left waaay behind by those first tier universities.

I mean, listen, before MIT and Yale and Stanford were what they are in research and development, they needed to take risks and sink some serious capital into the effort (Yale is still doing so, with no less than 5 new science centers under construction on the undergraduate campus alone, not including all that's being done at the medical school). Brown needs that same level of investment, or they'll just become a bigger Haverford or Wesleyan.

Also, it's fair to note, that in the Ivys, as far as resources go, it's Harvard, Yale, and then everyone else. I know someone in graduate studies in molecular biology at Princeton who came from Yale, and she says the depth and availability of resources is similarly night and day.

- Garris

[gregw]

Just checked and Brown's endowment is $1.9 billion.

Harvard's is $25.9 billion.

Yale's is $15.2 billion.

The endowments of Harvard and Yale are bigger than the GDP's of some developing nations.

[PVDJack]

Just checked and Brown's endowment is $1.9 billion.

Harvard's is $25.9 billion.

Yale's is $15.2 billion.

The endowments of Harvard and Yale are bigger than the GDP's of some developing nations.

Another data point: according Wikipedia, Dartmouth's endowment is $2.9 billion.

[Frankie811]

Sounds like this is the Sydney Frank bldg that was announced several months back.

http://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/index.ph...indpost&p=29524

[Frankie811]

http://www.projo.com/news/content/projo_20...2.18182083.html

[basachs]

Arming college police is a sensitive and volatile issue. Wonder what people's thoughts are on this?

Personally, I dont see an urban college police force being all that effective without being armed. They seem to have recieved adequate training.

[Garris]

I have no problem with it. I think Brown may actually be a little behind here. I think many large, urban university's police forces are armed (Yale's certainly were when I was there in the early 90's).

- Garris

PS: Speaking of Brown vs other Ivy resources, the Yale alumni magazine just came detailing how Yale is in the midst of a huge building boom. Something like 46 buildings being renovated, 17 brand new large buildings being built (most much larger than the Brown Biomed building), and 22 new buildings on the drawning board. Compare that with Brown's what? Like 1-2 new buildings and 4-5 on the agenda? The resource differences between Harvard, Yale, and the other Ivy's is pretty substantial... If anyone is interested, I can scan some of the maps and renders and photos of Yale's buildings...

[Cotuit]

If anyone is interested, I can scan some of the maps and renders and photos of Yale's buildings...

That would be interesting, I'd suggest posting it in the Hartford section.

[Frankie811]

PS: Speaking of Brown vs other Ivy resources, the Yale alumni magazine just came detailing how Yale is in the midst of a huge building boom. Something like 46 buildings being renovated, 17 brand new large buildings being built (most much larger than the Brown Biomed building), and 22 new buildings on the drawning board. Compare that with Brown's what? Like 1-2 new buildings and 4-5 on the agenda? The resource differences between Harvard, Yale, and the other Ivy's is pretty substantial... If anyone is interested, I can scan some of the maps and renders and photos of Yale's buildings...

And does Yale face the same public opposition as Brown does when presenting expansion projects.