Rezoning moves forward

Trinity decides former Oakmont residences are best option for faculty office space despite protests from Monte Vista community

by Rachel Puckett

At the beginning of this semester, Trinity University moved the offices of 50 faculty members to vacant, university-owned houses on Oakmont Court in order to accommodate construction projects on campus.

The move of these offices coincided with the final phase of Trinity’s $1-million construction project, a project that will bring cutting edge science facilities to campus. This stage involves demolishing Moody Engineering Building, but this step precedes the completion of the Center for the Sciences and Innovation and thus leaves several departments without space for their offices.
According to Sharon Jones Schweitzer, assistant vice president of University Communications, the decision to move faculty into the vacant houses came after several other temporary office spaces were investigated.

“The university explored a number of options to accommodate the displaced faculty, including moving them into our residence halls, but that would displace students, and we did not think that was fair to students, and it would involve considerable expense…Trinity determined that using some of the university-owned properties along Oakmont Court was its best option for housing these departments while we finish off the last phase of this construction,” Schweitzer said.

Trinity owns 13 houses on the streets adjacent to campus, and nine of those houses are on Oakmont Court. As of the beginning of this semester, four are being used as faculty offices. The additional houses are used as long and short-term faculty housing, and most of the houses have been university-owned for over 60 years according to Schweitzer.

The decision to use the four Oakmont houses as offices for faculty members has caused quite a stir in the community. The properties that Trinity owns on Oakmont Court are part of the Monte Vista Historical Association. The association is dedicated to maintaining the houses in the Monte Vista National Historic District as single-family residences.

Despite Trinity’s attempt maintain transparency with the historical association, its decision to use the houses as offices has inspired no small amount of backlash from association members and district residents.

The historical association’s main concern about the alternative use of the houses involves its belief that this use foreshadows the eventual westward expansion of Trinity’s campus as well as foreshadowing the demise of the Monte Vista neighborhood.
One Monte Vista resident, Vincent Johnson, supports this belief.

“Once one begins either tearing things down in the middle or nibbling away at the edges, that’s where things begin to unravel,” Johnson said.

Johnson, also in accordance with the feelings of the Monte Vista Historical Association, disagrees fundamentally with the idea of using the houses for anything other than single-family homes.

“Once [the houses] are no longer used as residences, they are no longer going to be a living part of the community,” Johnson said, “You might prop them up like a corpse, and try to make them look good, but they’re not going to be living persons. They’re not going to be part of the community.”

Schweitzer and the rest of the Trinity administration have attempted to quiet the historical society’s fears of westward expansion and community depletion by pointing out that this is not the first time that Trinity has used its Oakmont properties in non-traditional settings.

“Over the decades they have been used for a variety of purposes, and we feel that this is what we need to do in order to fulfill our academic mission and do the very best we can for our students in this circumstance,” Schweitzer said.

Michelle Bushey is a chemistry professor whose office was recently transferred to 115 Oakmont Court. Bushey is adjusting to the difficulties of having an office slightly removed from campus, but finds little reason for the Monte Vista Historical Association to suspect the worst of Trinity.

Bushey’s biggest concern revolves around students’ ability to seek out the chemistry department with questions and concerns.
“I am concerned about how much students will be around. In Moody, in chemistry, students were there all the time, and I really think that students saw our department as their home away from the dorms in many ways, and I hope that that continues here,” she said.

In an attempt to help students reach professors, the chemistry department will be reserving a room in the library for professors to conduct office hours.

As for working in the historic Monte Vista neighborhood, Bushey has no qualms about the faculty’s ability to fit in with the district’s prestigious origins.

“We’re going to be very good neighbors,” Bushey said.