When Mark Bertolami talks about ball fields and traffic, he's talking about the big plans Florida State University has for land it owns outside the perimeters of its main campus. As Director of Facilities Planning, Mr. Bertolami rolled out drawings from the campus master plan at a recent neighborhood meeting. Plans for installation of a competition diving pool, ball fields and other recreational amenities west of the Seminole Golf Course and north of Lake Bradford Road will create what is being termed the "southwest campus."
This facility will create additional traffic to an already stressed artery, Levy Avenue, which leads into Innovation Park. Neighborhood children walking to Pineview Elementary School must now cross the busy Levy Avenue. Mr. Bertolami indicated that students would "be encouraged" not to cut through the neighborhood, but asked to drive along Lake Bradford Road to West Orange Avenue. No neighborhood investments or improvements were included in the plan, despite the recommendations of the Urban Land Institutes's expensive study from a number of years back.
When asked about the once planned bike/pedestrian paths from the main campus to the planned intramural fields, planners indicated that no infrastructure for this was included in the present.
Note to Tallahassee's Star Metro:
In a recent speech to the Commission on the Future, Mr. Bertolami quoted a very smart student:
We need to begin rethinking the layout and operation of our intracampus transit service, the Garnet and Gold bus system, to better serve our evolving campus. As one frustrated student once asked me, "If Disney can park and move 100,000 people a day, why can't we handle a fraction of that?" An unfair question perhaps but one that we should not be afraid to discuss. Also, those of us who use campus transportation and parking systems must be willing to pay for any increases in costs necessary to put these improvements in place.
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