The proposed Master Plan will modernize university facilities and meet the educational needs of students and faculty as the university moves ahead in the 21st century. Because a majority of the buildings on campus were constructed between the 1950s and 1970s, these facilities need updating to allow LMU to continue to attract the best students and faculty for decades to come. The proposed Master Plan Project would provide these state-of-the-art facilities, as well as make important updates to student housing, increase the amount of undergraduate student housing, provide new parking at strategic locations on the campus, and improve pedestrian connections throughout the campus.

LMU is sensitive to the fact that residences have been built around the campus since the university moved to Westchester in 1929, and has created a plan that is respectful of this neighborhood setting. LMU has voluntarily created a 40-foot setback along its entire southern and eastern property lines to separate the neighboring community from new buildings. No buildings or structures with floor area would be permitted within this 40-foot buffer area. Within these setbacks, LMU also maintains landscaped buffers of 5 to 15 feet in some areas and LMU has agreed to maintain these landscaped buffers. The university has also committed to looking at ways to improve the quantity and quality of this landscaping. LMU will maintain a fence along 78th Street and build a higher fence along Fordham Road that will reduce the opportunity for students to park in the neighborhood and ‘‘jump the fence” to get to class.

The university also has committed that if the new sports pavilion is located at the corner of Fordham and 80th Street, the main entrance to the building will be oriented away from the road.

As part of the campus redesign, LMU will increase the number of undergraduate students living on campus from 60% to 75%, which would bring more students under the university’s supervision. The Master Plan includes new, apartment-style residences that are comparable to the apartments students are currently living in off-campus, and are much more comfortable than a typical dorm room.

To address any issues involving students living off campus, LMU is also establishing a 24/7 hotline to the university’s Department of Public Safety to handle calls from the community, including complaints about student disturbances off-campus. A public safety officer will be on hand to answer such calls, day or night, and the phone number will be advertised on the LMU web site. LMU will also make a public safety officer available Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 6 P.M. to 2 A.M., to address any complaints from neighbors.

In preparing the Master Plan’s Draft EIR, a parking study was prepared by a nationally recognized firm to calculate future demand for parking, which was approved by the City’s Department of Transportation. This parking study determined that adding 609 parking places on campus would more than meet the Master Plan’s parking demand. In addition, LMU will improve the design of the parking on campus so that there are more parking places at the busiest parts of the campus. The surface lots in these areas will likely be turned into above-ground structures that can hold more cars. The planned improvements for the pedestrian walkways will also help by making it easier for people who park farther from the center of campus to get there on foot.

Parking will be added as the campus population increases, which includes a cap of 7,800 full-time equivalent student. However, LMU has agreed to add 190 parking spaces in connection with the first building to be constructed under the Master Plan, the new Life Sciences Building. LMU has also agreed to complete an additional parking analysis prior to the construction of any new sports pavilion or conference center. If the City determines that additional parking is required, the university will provide the additional parking,

It is currently legal for students to park in the neighborhood streets. However, LMU has agreed to fully cooperate with the community, the City Council office, and the Department of Transportation if the surrounding neighborhoods decide to pursue a permit parking program or other restrictions on parking in the residential areas. LMU has also committed to building a taller fence along Fordham Road, which would prevent students from parking in the neighborhood and then “jumping the fence” to easily get back inside the campus.
The Master Plan calls for adding 609 new parking spaces on campus as well as increasing the number of undergraduate students residing in on-campus housing by 15%, which will also help reduce street traffic and parking on local streets, as less students will live outside the boundaries of the university.

The Master Plan proposes a plan of development for the campus and establishes a set of regulations for future construction and use of the campus. However due to the long-term horizon of the Master Plan (20 years) and LMU’s need to raise money to construct buildings proposed in the Master Plan, individual buildings have not yet been designed. Concept drawings of the Life Sciences Building, which is the first building planned to be built as part of the campus redesign, are available on LMU’s web site. The new William H. Hannon Library, completed last year, is a great example of the environmental sustainability and high quality architectural design of LMU’s future buildings. It is rich in technology, offers space for collaborative group study, and creates an environment that speaks to the students of this century. The William H. Hannon Library is also open to the community.

Moving the recycling area is one of the first two projects LMU intends to implement upon approval of the Master Plan and certification of the EIR by the City of Los Angeles. The university is looking into relocating the recycling area to a subterranean level of the existing Drollinger Parking Plaza on Leavey Campus.

The Life Sciences Building is the first building planned to be built under the Master Plan. LMU is increasingly prominent in the sciences, including math, physics, chemistry as well as civil engineering, computer and environmental science; However its buildings don’t live up to students’ and faculty’s current needs; Seaver Hall was built in 1962, and Pereira Hall of Engineering was built in 1955. LMU needs new technologies, state-of-the art research labs and modern classrooms to stay competitive in all the sciences. In conjunction with the new Life Sciences Building, LMU will add 190 net new parking spaces to campus.

As the Master Plan gets built out, construction work on the campus will generate an estimated $1.7 billion and some 15,363 jobs for the city and county according to an analysis of the economic impact of the Master Plan. Construction and development of the Master Plan is expected to generate approximately $2.9 million in direct sales tax revenue for the city, and $7 million for the county. Additional revenue in the form of permits and fees will be approximately $40.2 million. After the plan is fully realized, the economic activity generated by LMU’s operations will be approximately $519.6 million, annually, within Los Angeles County and city, supporting approximately 6,100 jobs. This includes approximately $1.6 million in sales tax revenue within the county, and approximately $559,000 within the city.

The Draft Environmental Impact Report (Draft EIR) is a significant milestone in the ongoing planning and approval process for Loyola Marymount University’s Master Plan Project. As with all major development projects in California, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires that an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) be prepared before the project can be approved by the city and constructed. The EIR identifies and evaluates any potentially significant environmental effects of the project, identifies ways to eliminate or minimize significant effects, and describes reasonable alternatives to the project.

The City of Los Angeles, with the assistance of an outside environmental consulting firm, Impact Sciences, has completed the Draft EIR and submitted the document for a 45-day public review and comment period. Subsequently, LMU agreed to an extension of this period, to allow public review to last a total of 60 days. The public circulation period began on January 14, 2010, and ended on March 15, 2010. The city will next prepare responses to all of the comments submitted as part of the Final EIR, which will likely be issued by the city this coming summer.

A Specific Plan is a detailed zoning ordinance enforced by the city like any other zoning ordinance. The Specific Plan proposed for LMU is 28 pages long and regulates height, use, setback, parking and signage on campus. The LMU Specific Plan establishes a maximum square footage of development on campus, beyond which LMU is not permitted to build any more facilities. The Specific Plan would also impose a maximum enrollment for students, a maximum number of students that could be housed on campus, and establish restrictions on the location of academic, residential, athletic and parking facilities. The Specific Plan is proposed for the campus to make all of the regulations that apply to the campus clear and transparent to the public.