You want more freshman living on campus?
Make it a destination not an outlet kiosk to get aspirin. It is as simple as that…and it has been this way for decades. law and very few others want to make it mandatory for freshman to live on campus. Put yourself in these freshmen, freshwomen shoes. No friends our campus is not ucla’s campus. Don’t believe some that want you to think so.
You make it attractive and fun to live on campus and yes THEY WILL COME IN DROVES Let’s face it, this has been our achilles heel.
1 Like
By transforming the green lot into restaurants/bars/ shops, that would greatly enhance the Gameday atmosphere outside TDECU. The frat/ sororities village idea sounds cool too.
3 Likes
That would displace the tailgaters that are already in that lot, wouldn’t it?
Yes. Yes it would, Moncoog. Any other rebuttals? You seem to have plenty.
I’m not sure which lot is the green lot anymore. I thought we were talking the gravel lot on the corner of Wheeler and Calhoun.
The green lot is all of that asphalt area across the street from Cullen Oaks.
1 Like
Maybe im misreading your reply but it sounds negative. But I’ll take it in a positive tone and simply say that, among the top complaints on this board, destruction of tailgating has been amongst the top when referring to the game day experience.
From the loss of the Robertson pavilions to the loss of the close in rv lot this year and then some.
Building commercial space on a lot that may have tailgaters on it simply sends the message that tailgating is not smiles upon.
I have no idea if the green lot even has a lot of tailgaters so it may be moot.
But replacing tailgate spots with commercial space isn’t a good idea for game day atmosphere.
If restaurants across from tdecu on Scott street aren’t making it then somewhere off the main thoroughfare won’t.
Someone mentioned the college of medicine and that would be a great spot for commercial space if there’s parking available for game day people. Parking there and eating/drinking before and after the game, with a shuttle to the stadium, would be cool. And be viable if it can attract traffic on non game days from OST
2 Likes
Related news: New RAD Center Opened (UC Satellite replacement)
1 Like
If we’re prioritizing making UH’s campus more residential, that necessarily trades off with surface lot parking. There’s not really a way around that. The people who visit campus six or seven times a year are gonna have to take a backseat to the ones that live there for 8 months.
Scott is only a “main thoroughfare” for cars. For pedestrians, crossing Scott is inconvenient and dangerous. Students who live on and near campus aren’t getting in their cars, driving across the street, and re-parking; if they have to drive anyway, they might as well go to Midtown or the Heights or wherever else.
4 Likes
That new rad center should help. It depends on their hrs being opened also.
1 Like
It’s a chicken or egg situation.
But in this scenario the discussion is about converting a green lot into commercial. The students aren’t going to keep any restaurant or shop or bar afloat so the commercial center has to be geared towards customers outside the immediate area.
If that happens then there’ll be places for the students to enjoy and promote a residential feel to the campus.
Can anyone name a campus where the residential feel is supported by commercial enterprises that cater solely to the students?
We have this great place
If you change the word “solely” to “primarily,” then yeah there are MANY campuses like that.
Just go to any school located in a “college town,” and you’ll see.
2 Likes
You’re right, primarily is a better qualifier than solely.
But what college towns are like this? College station is a city large enough to self support its businesses.
Blacksburg, va with only 44k people is probably the best example of businesses primarily dealing with students.
What business on the green lot at UH could survive primarily from students, only a fraction of which are old enough to drink?
Keep in mind, at many of the places that seem large enough to “self support” their businesses, even most of the non-students patronizing these businesses work at the schools, which are almost always the largest employers in the city. Auburn, for example, has a population of 85k, and nearly 10% of that population consists of non-student University employees.
The area around most major residential Universities is supported primarily by students and staff. If you lifted TAMU out of College Station, nearly all of the businesses in that “self supporting” city that happen to be near the university would either relocate elsewhere in the city or shutter. Likewise, Atlanta is absolutely a self-sustaining city, but Midtown would take a huge hit if Georgia Tech was suddenly not there. Those businesses are supported by the students and staff of the university.
As far as stuff that could go on the green lot and serve non-drinking age students, there are a lot of options that would dramatically improve the experience for residential students:
- A grocery store
- A pharmacy
- Retail stores
- Fast food places that don’t close at 6PM
- Coffee shops
People spend money on things that aren’t alcohol. I don’t get the weird hyperfixation on bars.
1 Like
Not just that but places like College Station have not always been as big as they are now necessarily. They grew over the years with the engine being the university.
Other than the grocery store, such as an HEB being near campus, I don’t really see much value in emphasizing the other bullets
The Inner Loop isn’t even that large once you’re used to it, and there are plenty of retail/coffee shops in places like Midtown, Heights and Montrose. I work remote sometimes at coffee shops and see plenty of college-aged kids from a variety of universities.
While I’m not oppose to develop more trendy places near campus, I think the benefit of UH would be the entire inner loop area rather than just Third Ward.
As I’ve said before though, many of the kids from places like Katy, Cypress, etc… probably aren’t familiar with the inner loop, so they just go to school and then go back home.
1 Like
The inner loop isn’t huge, but it’s still impossible to get around if you don’t have a car, and that’s really the crux of the issue here. If you run into a UH student studying at Agora or Tout Suite or whatever, they almost certainly drove there. They likely don’t live on campus, and their patterns of engaging with the university probably reflect that – they show up to school in the morning and leave after their last class. They probably don’t regularly attend campus events that happen outside those hours, including but not limited to sporting events.
I personally don’t think that’s the end of the world; I’m relatively fine with UH being a commuter college for which students’ relationship with the school is largely transactional. But this thread started with the premise that we want students to have a closer relationship with the school, as those at more residential schools do, and getting there means both making it easier to live on campus and making it harder to commute.
And in any case, Houston needs to better enable people to live without cars.
I’m not. That virtually ensures that we will never have the fan base, the brand size, or the graduation rates needed to reach the top echelons of either academics (AAU and USNEWS rankings) or athletics (P2).
1 Like
Eh. Not every school can have those things. Large commuter schools play a meaningful role in the higher education landscape, and if UH evolves out of that – which is a matter that I’m personally agnostic on – I’d certainly like to see another similar school established or elevated in Houston to fill that spot.