UT Dallas Magazine - Winter 2012 - (Page 27)

state about 70 acres on the north edge of campus, for the President George Bush Turnpike. The UT Dallas campus has six soccer fields. Four more are under construction. The school partners with the Lake Highlands Soccer Association. “We have a huge number of Richardson and Metroplex people using our soccer fields,” said Rachavong. “Hundreds of kids and parents. We could build 20 more and rent them all out, all the time.” Sometimes creative funding and collaboration are necessary for the University to accomplish its goals. “It’s hard for the University to get money for infrastructure,” said former Richardson Mayor Gary Slagel. “They can get it for buildings and things like that, but infrastructure is more difficult.” So moneymaking arrangements such as renting playing fields help the University build and maintain the infrastructure as well as provide services to local residents. Sometimes, if the city sees potential benefits, it will step in and provide financial assistance for infrastructure development, as it did for the Campbell Road entrance. Josie Sullivan, who moved to Cottonwood Creek, the Floyd Road subdivision, in 1976, describes the traffic problem. “We’re an encapsulated neighborhood as far as getting in and out,” she said. “We have two cul-de-sacs. The only way to get out is the main road and it was just a constant stream of traffic.” Conflict is often triggered when a school’s expansion displaces residents and businesses. Arriving at VCU in 1990, Trani stepped directly into a hornet’s nest. “The day I was appointed, there was a press conference and one-third of the room was picketers,” he said. At issue was the university’s plan to exercise eminent domain. “It had become the whole community versus VCU,” Trani said. Issues surrounding land and development often bring to light disconnection between universities and cities. The problem at VCU and in other strained town-gown relationships, said Trani, was that the university made unilateral decisions. “In cases like that, neighbors really feel that the university doesn’t care about them and it’s just trying to grab their land,” said Trani. UT Dallas has never had to grasp at its neighbors’ holdings. A major factor contributing to the congenial union is the dowry the University brought: land, The University of Texas at Dallas land and more land. UT Dallas’ founders endowed the school with about 325 acres in Richardson, Plano and Dallas, that by 1993, through other gifts and purchases, had become more than 1,200 acres encompassing unincorporated parts of Dallas and Collin counties, as well as the cities. In its early days, the campus proper was surrounded by so much open acreage that it was invisible to the community, said UT Dallas Police Chief Larry Zacharias. Zacharias spent 31 years on the Richardson police force, serving as Richardson’s chief of police from 2002 to 2008. In 1977, when he joined the force, the city was only about two-thirds of today’s geographic size, population about 70,000. “Campbell and Coit were two-lane blacktop,” he said. With that much land, when UT Dallas expands, the neighbors have barely noticed. In fact, UT Dallas is so land-rich, it can share as well as profit from its holdings. In 1975, the University sold Richardson eight acres for a water plant, and Plano purchased eight acres for a city park. In 1986, UT Dallas gave the Winter 2012 27

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of UT Dallas Magazine - Winter 2012

UT Dallas Magazine - Winter 2012
Contents
On Campus
From the Lab
Arts and Culture
Courtside Success
Athletics
Research Is Teaching
Town and Gown
In Your Footsteps: An Alumni Perspective
Alumni Notes
In Memoriam
Hindsight

UT Dallas Magazine - Winter 2012