ITHACA, N.Y. — As the movie Spaceballs said, “there’s two sides to every Schwartz”. In Ithaca, those sides are the Schwartz Performing Arts Center in inner Collegetown, and Schwartz Plaza.
Don’t worry if you’re not exactly familiar with the plaza. Its current form, with walls facing the street and barren, windswept pavers, isn’t exactly the most inviting place. Cornell University, owner of the Schwartz Center, hopes to change that.
Since the building and plaza’s opening in 1989, the university has intended to create a nicer gathering space, but plans have only started to gain steam recently. There are a couple different reasons for that – for one, Cornell is increasing its footprint in Collegetown, with the new Breazzano Center coming online next year. For two, the non-institutional investment in Collegetown has also seen a sharp uptick in the past few years – over $50 million within just a few blocks of the Schwartz.
What this boils down to is that there’s a much higher concentration of residents in the immediate area, and a more substantial presence from the Big Red. One of the commonly-cited flaws in Collegetown’s layout is that there’s no substantial public gathering space – the gorges aren’t meant for gatherings, and there aren’t any parks. It’s no surprise Collegetown Bagels’ tables are packed tight on any day with halfway-decent weather. With this renovation, there’s an opportunity to present a more lively, vibrant scene at Cornell’s doorstep, and give Collegetown the public space that the city has long sought.
The initial “visioning charette” was held in September, and two alternative design concepts were presented in a public meeting in late October. Copies of those presentations ca be found here. Both plans, shown above, have the same general features – the wall facing College Avenue is taken down, while large stone seat walls and low-slung steps frame an airy plaza with movable chairs and tables, as well as fixed bench seating. New lighting, bike racks, pavers, and plantings would be included as part of the renovation. The primary differences are that option 1 makes the steps larger and grander by reducing the seat walls in favor of a stepped plaza corner, and option 2 has less prominent steps, but is more green and lush.
According to campus planner David Cutter, “[t]here was not a clear preference for one design option over the other expressed during the public meeting. However, there seemed to be general agreement that the way the steps framed the larger plaza in Option 1, combined with the more dense plantings and seating options along College Avenue from Option 2, should be combined into the next generation plan.”
That next generation plan is also intended to be the final design concept. It will be presented the evening of Wednesday November 28th at the Schwartz Center. If all goes smoothly, the project will be presented to the city over the winter, and if municipal approvals are granted, the renovations to Schwartz Plaza could be underway by summer 2017.
Notably, the design and engineering work on this project is all homegrown. Cornell is working with local landscape architecture firm TWMLA on the plaza’s design, and rounding out the project team are local companies Taitem Engineering and T. G. Miller Engineers and Surveyors.