By MIKE NORMAN
mnorman@star-telegram.com
Arlington is lucky.
The city is being transformed for the better, and I’m not talking about becoming the home of a $1.15 billion venue that in 2011 will host the Super Bowl.
Cowboys Stadium isn’t transforming Arlington. It’s great to have, but in the end it is superficial.
The University of Texas at Arlington is transforming the city, not just what it looks like but what it feels like to be there. The pace of change is accelerating, deliberately and methodically.
Meet College Town, UTA.
That’s what UTA President Jim Spaniolo and city leaders call their vision for development in the area that includes Arlington’s downtown and the UTA campus.
For Spaniolo, the changes involved are clearly a personal goal. UTA is transforming Arlington because Spaniolo is transforming UTA.
"We have to be regarded differently than we have been in the past," he says. He has charted a path to make UTA into one of the nation’s most highly regarded universities, "Tier 1" status. And he sees the atmosphere on campus and in the surrounding community as an essential element.
A vibrant downtown with restaurants, coffee shops, grocery stores, housing, green space and high-tech jobs based on research happening at UTA, he says, "will energize both our city and our university."
UTA intends to jump-start the College Town effort.
Next spring, the university expects to break ground on a $73 million, 190,000-square-foot special events center between South Center and South Pecan streets at West Second Street. The 6,500-seat center, long a dream at UTA, will be home to the university’s basketball and volleyball teams and will serve as a venue for convocations, commencements, concerts, speakers and conferences.
Adjacent to the center will be a $67 million project including a 1,800-space parking garage and a residence hall with living space for 450 students. The ground floor will have office and retail space.
UTA today has 28,000 students, the most in its history, and 5,000 faculty members. Counting university and private housing, about 7,000 to 8,000 students live less than a mile from campus. That’s a good customer base for commercial developments.
Spaniolo sees it as a 10-year effort for UTA to attain Tier 1 status, which will be based mainly on increased research efforts. More money to aid that growth will be available if voters approve a constitutional amendment listed as Proposition 4 on the Nov. 3 ballot.
The university has also launched a vigorous effort to gain more money from private donations. It added 17 new members to its development board, including such illustrious UTA graduates as retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks, former commander of U.S. military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and actor Lou Diamond Phillips.
Until UTA reaches Tier 1 status, Spaniolo says, decisions will be made with a single-minded focus.
"If serving gourmet food in the University Club doesn’t help us become a national research university, then we’re not going to do it," he said in a Sept. 15 speech at his annual leadership luncheon. "If bringing back football doesn’t help us, we’re not going to do that, either."
The football program at UTA was disbanded after the 1985 season for lack of interest.
What sort of thing does he see as creating a Tier 1 atmosphere at UTA? For a hint, look at the hugely successful Maverick Speakers Series, which started last year and has brought nationally recognized speakers such as Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Thomas Friedman and Doris Kearns Goodwin to campus to speak before full-house crowds. The Oct. 22 speaker for this year’s series is CNN political analyst David Gergen.
And Spaniolo clearly is banking on College Town, UTA. So is Arlington.
Mike Norman is editorial director of the Star-Telegram/ Arlington and Northeast Tarrant County. 817-390-7830
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