Officials considering “green space” expansion

A stretch of land along Old Omen Road and Spur 248 has University officials vowing to find ways to furnish more “green space” for intramural athletes. A $625,000 donation courtesy of Mary John Spence in September of 2004 helped University officials purchase an 11.3-acre tract of land for expansion of the campus.

Gregg Lassen, executive vice president for business affairs said the University has 22 acres of land after Cambridge officials purchased more land than they needed. “I think it is important to recognize that there was a donation of land and then a purchase of additional land,” Lassen said.

“We now have a block of roughly 22 acres with Cambridge giving us a part of the land that they purchased.” Deanna Sims, director of major gifts and advancement services, said receiving a donation of this magnitude is a huge plus.

“It was very important to us,” Sims said. “So many times people who give gifts of that size have their name attached to a building or whatever is given. In this case, her husband Ralph and she both were committed to land acquisition and that is one of the reasons they were the family that helped us so much.”

Sims said officials approached Mrs. Spence asking for a donation. “We asked if she would be willing to donate the price of that land so that we could purchase it using her donation,” she said. “Fortunately, we were able to purchase the property but as University’s go there is not a lot of extra money lying around.”

A contest is planned to name the new University Center commons area led by the Student Government Association. “She (Mrs. Spence) said she would like to have the student’s name it and not have my name on it at all,” Sims said. “What we are going to do is have a contest and let Mrs. Spence be one of the judges and have the students name the commons.”

Sims said the contest is scheduled to happen before the new University Center is completed in 2010. Lassen said the issue of intramural sports teams having to leave the field for the soccer teams they are trying to find ways to solve the problem. “We have a beautiful campus, which has trees, hills and lakes and makes it a desirable place to be,” he said.

“It is also difficult to find flat ground to play on and we want to work on that.” Lassen said he hopes to start work on the land in the fall. “We are doing the homework right now with the physical plant director (Chip Clark) to see if there are enough trees worth to sell for a company to take the trees for lumber,” he said.

“I think you will start to see work being done out there before the start of Christmas break.” One of the problems with use of the current campus space is students finding places to play. “We now have younger students who come and live close to the campus and want to be on campus,” he said.

“This is a great problem to have that we are running into issues of not enough space for athletics use of the field and intramural use of the field. I can tell you that students have said it does not have to be fancy, they just want a place to play.”