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Despite a low turnout, opinions were strong at Thursday’s Campus Planning Committee open forum on proposals for campus beautification projects.
About 20 faculty, staff and students attended the forum and heard plans for a new plaza near Barrows Hall as well as the Campus Arboretum’s proposed replacement of the mall trees.
Paul Cloke Plaza will be located between Barrows Hall, the Advanced Manufacturing Center and East Annex.
Chet Rock, associate dean for research and finance for the College of Engineering, explained the committee’s plans for the plaza.
Most prominent will be a 38-foot structure meant to evoke the emblematic clock tower. The clock once topped Wingate Hall before a fire gutted the building in 1943. The clock tower was not rebuilt with the rest of the building.
The tower, which would be freestanding in the plaza, will be held up with four corner pillars with a space for students to walk beneath.
The plan calls for the clock to be made by Balzer Clockworks of Freeport, the United States’ only mechanical clockmaker.
Rock said the tower’s bell, which rang loud enough to be heard across the campus, was damaged in the fire.
After years of sitting on display around campus, the bell disappeared.
Rock said the Planning Committee is searching for the original bell in hopes of putting it in the tower.
“It’s probably sitting in somebody’s barn in the area,” he said, adding that if found, the bell could be rung to commemorate special occasions.
Rock said alumni from the 1940s have fond memories of the bell, and hanging it again “might attract more people and get them interested in fundraising.
Certainly it would serve as an attraction if we were able to have it here.”
The funding for the plaza comes from the construction of the Barrows Hall addition and the Advanced Manufacturing Center.
The cost of the buildings included money for landscaping and grounds work, so there is $200,000 for the plaza.
In addition to that money, there is $170,000 set aside for art in the plaza thanks to the two expensive engineering buildings and a Maine law requiring that 1 percent of building costs be allocated to art.
Finally Rock said there has been discussion of a small amphitheater next to East Annex, but it isn’t included in the current budget.
Once the tower and artwork are installed, they expect the amphitheater to come back into consideration.
Rock said Cloke Plaza would add a needed gathering place on the campus, as UMaine currently has few.
Paul Cloke was dean of the College of Engineering from 1926-50, back when it was called the College of Technology.
He worked in Wingate Hall when the fire destroyed it in 1943.
The Plaza is still pending approval, but feedback at the forum was positive.
Christopher Campbell, professor of plant systematics in the department of biological sciences, outlined the plan to replace the ash trees on the mall with Quercus bicolor, a white oak which Campbell said are more appropriate for a formal green space like the mall.
He outlined a list of problems with the green ash trees on the mall including their poor growth form and susceptibility to ice storm damage.
The university would not use public funds for the project, Campbell said.
Instead, the opportunity to donate money for the trees would go onto a menu of needs presented to potential private donors.
When UMaine eventually replaces the ash trees, Campbell said the planting would be just a matter of a few days.
“It would be very well orchestrated, and done quickly with minimum delay.”
The proposal faced dissent from Nadiya Dragan, a graduate student in the communication department. Dragan collected broken acorns from Quercus bicolors already on campus that squirrels had broken open.
“It’s going to be very annoying because rodents will come and crack them and we will have pieces all over the grass,” Dragan said.
Dragan said the smaller trees would leave the mall ugly for years.
According to Campbell, after buying the trees and acclimating them in a separate space for two years, they would be 15-20 feet tall when planted.
Campbell said one of the benefits to the species is a high early growth rate of about a foot per year, and that within 30-35 years of planting the oaks would be as high as the current trees.
Dragan said she is opposed on principle to replacing the ash trees.
“The idea that trees are not perfect enough for the mall doesn’t seem right to me. People are not perfect,” Dragan said. “We don’t deject them from society because they are not perfect.”
Campbell said he is confident that replacing the ash trees is best for UMaine.
“It would not be the spectacular green space for a few decades, certainly, but you have to wait for good things.”
Bangor Daily News