Allie Bedell
Equinox Staff
As both the city of Keene and the Keene State College campus prepare for the opening of Arcadia Hall next fall, questions about increased foot traffic between the new student housing and campus arise. Although an extra 140 students or so are expected to walk Ralston Street every day next year, currently there are no plans to make changes to the area.
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The dorm-style housing aimed at students, which is roughly the same distance from the center of campus as Pondside II, is privately owned and unaffiliated with the college. Because it is not on college property, the college is not responsible for improving conditions of the area, which could use repaving, widening, better lighting, and a sidewalk on the same side of the street as the residence hall.
Amanda Warman, the director of Campus Safety, pointed out that because Arcadia Hall is in no way affiliated with the college, it’s just like any other off-campus housing location.
“I know it’s been an issue for discussion,” Warman said. “Why should Arcadia Hall be any different than those groups? If we’re going to do it for that group of students, we have to do it for all students.”
According to Warman, the college installed blue lights off-campus when classrooms were moved to 57 Ralston St., while the new Technology Design and Safety Center is being built. Even though the college doesn’t own the property holding the temporary classrooms, they lease the land, and therefore can install blue lights.
Although this will not be done between campus and Arcadia because none of the land belongs to the college, Warman said the college is looking for ways to make students feel safe, through means like escorts and the safety shuttle. She said, however, they’re looking for the best way to provide safety while ensuring they don’t become a ride to parties.
“It’s a safety shuttle to support the academic mission of the college,” Warman said.
But in terms of improving the conditions of Ralston Street, the college can only advocate and work with the city as much as possible, according to Jay Kahn, the vice president for finance and planning.
“The college’s role is to work with developers in the city to create a safe environment,” Kahn said. Kahn has attempted to get the city to realize the need to improve Ralston, especially with the arrival of more students in the area this fall. “I mention it at every opportunity. I have encouraged that they anticipate the additional foot traffic.”
While there are sidewalks on the east side of the street, Kahn noted Arcadia is on the west, so students will have to cross Ralston in order to get to a sidewalk.
“That does exist to the west side of the street,” Kahn said of sidewalks. “There are factors that inhibit that factor on the east side of the street. Hopefully there will be very strong efforts made to improve the condition.”
Adding sidewalks, however, is not just as simple as putting them in. Rhett Lamb, the city of Keene’s planning director, explained that in order to continuously be keeping up with all areas of the city, places with no sidewalk at all are considered first.
“As we prioritize locations to build new sidewalks, one of the criteria is whether or not there is a sidewalk,” Lamb said. Because Ralston has a sidewalk on the eastern side, Lamb said the project probably won’t be taken up for a while, if at all.
In addition to the needs of other portions of the city, Lamb said several other factors come into play. “There are often pretty substantial physical issues,” Lamb said. “The Pub’s a great example; they’re right against the property line.”
Properties on Ralston Street don’t all run in a straight line, where some jut out toward the road further than others. The Pub’s property runs the furthest into the road, and would be the biggest obstacle to widening and adding sidewalks to an already narrow, old road.
Despite the potential foot traffic both past and through the property of The Pub, owner Mike Kapulaski said he isn’t worried about the number of new students moving into the area.
“Pedestrian traffic is good for any business, really,” Kapulaski said.
Kapulaski acknowledged that students are likely to cut through his parking lot to get to campus, especially because the closest crosswalk on Winchester Street is on the other side of his building. Kapulaski isn’t bothered by the college population though. He said they provide great economic benefits to the community, and during his eight years as the city’s mayor, he tried to unite the community with the college as much as possible, giving it high praise. “I love the college. I’ve been a really big ally of the college,” Kapulaski said.
The most likely way for Ralston Street to be reevaluated to significant improvements is more development in the area, especially like Arcadia Hall.
“Once we have more development, there will be more opportunities,” Lamb said.
Though plans haven’t been set for more of these student-geared buildings yet, they’re not out of the realm of possibility.
“We don’t have any more land to develop for student housing,” Winsor said. “It’s not competitive at all. It’s a good thing. It’s more of a need that’s going to be filled.”
According to Kahn, the college helped make Arcadia a reality in order to encourage this development. He said the builders were having trouble creating the necessary parking, so the college will lease 50 Winchester lot spaces to Arcadia. Students will be able to purchase these 24-hour permits, like on-campus students.
“It was the first development,” Kahn said, “and we wanted to be sure we had the ball rolling. It helped the city give the final approval for that developer.”
Because of this parking agreement and the initial advice KSC gave in designing the buildings, Kent Drake-Deese, the director of Residential Life and Housing, said the community thought Arcadia was affiliated with the college. Residents were concerned, because this would take the land off the city’s tax roll. Arcadia’s advertising, he said, was also somewhat misleading. Although the building’s intended for students, signs around it suggested it was part of the college.
“We’ve had a little bit of an issue where they were marketing it as ‘Keene State College,’” Drake-Deese said.
The college has eagerly awaited Arcadia in order to see how it works out, and whether or not more buildings like it are in Keene’s future.
“If it benefits students, which right now it does, then it’s a good thing,” Drake-Deese said. “We clearly do not have enough on-campus apartment options for juniors and seniors.
In 2004, when the master plan was being drawn for the campus, Kahn said the college aimed at providing housing for 60 percent of the full-time undergraduate students. He said this would provide more students with ample housing, noting that the one-family homes many students live in off-campus and the neighborhoods they’re placed in were never intended to be college housing.
“When we wrote the master plan, we wanted to provide additional on-campus student housing, so we could accommodate for more students on campus,” Kahn said.
Kahn said the college is hoping Arcadia Hall succeeds because it will help alleviate the fact that they were not able to meet the 60 percent mark. Instead, the college exhausted its debt capacity and took more property from the city tax roll.
Allie Bedell can be contacted at abedell@ksc.mailcruiser.com.