The Pomona College Strategic Master Plan will guide growth and development of this historic 140-acre campus for the next 25 years. Patrick Siegman directed the plan’s transportation component while a principal at Nelson\Nygaard, as part of a team led by Moule and Polyzoides.
The design process illustrated that, through infill, the College had the capacity to double the size of its physical plant within its current boundaries, while enhancing its academic and physical character.
The plan addresses a series of interrelated campus planning challenges: the appropriate location and form of buildings, the definition of open spaces and landscapes such as quads and pedestrian malls, sensitive distribution of traffic and parking demands, and academic departmental expansion. By building incrementally within the Plan’s simple enabling code, the quality of the campus will reflect the College’s academic eminence.
To create a harmonious environment, the plan closes key streets in the heart of campus to motor vehicles, converting them into oak-lined pedestrian malls. Traffic calming measures, such as pedestrian refuges and raised crosswalks, will eliminate speeding and ease pedestrian crossings on the remaining streets.
The plan’s transportation strategy takes a “low traffic” approach, in order to ease entitlements for growth, establish a more positive relationship with neighbors, and avoid the high cost of constructing underground garages. A menu of traffic reduction strategies, ranging from a faculty/staff parking cash-out program, to unbundling student parking costs from housing rents, to providing shuttles, carshare pods, and improved bicycle and pedestrian facilities, will help the College meet its sustainability goals. On a campus where nearly two-thirds of students lack cars, the plan also improves transportation choices for faculty, staff, and students alike.
Images courtesy of Moule and Polyzoides