December 10, 2009
James Goodman
D&C Staff Writer

A new downtown Monroe Community College campus has become a plan
in search of a site.

The criteria approved this week by MCC trustees calls for a campus at a
ãcenter cityä downtown parcel that is at least three or four acres. We want a college campus, not just a high-rise building,ä said MCC President Anne Kress.

Based in Brighton, MCC has enjoyed a surge in enrollment up 40
percent since 1990 as community colleges have grown in popularity.
About 3,000 of the 18,977 students enrolled for the fall semester attend
the Damon City Campus in the Sibley building.

A nine-member committee of MCC officials proposed the guidelines that
the school‰s board of trustees unanimously approved on Monday. This latest search for a site crystallized after plans for Renaissance Square fell apart in the summer. A downtown MCC campus was one of three components of that project. Kress said that the $72 million half Renaissance can now be used for a new campus.

Requests for bids for a site-selection firm will be made soon. Kress hopes
to have the trustees vote on a firm to head up site selection at their February meeting. But finding a three- to four-acre parcel in the center city could be a problem. A look at a digital map of downtown properties doesnt show many clusters of cleared land in a central location.

Presented as seven unranked criteria, the site-selection guidelines also
say that consideration should be given to accessible public transportation
and parking as well as access to the county fiber network and utilities.
Vacant land or shovel-ready sites would get the highest priority in the
acquisition availability category of the guidelines. Kress said that no proposed sites have been considered.

"You look to see what is available", she said.

Katie Eggers Comeau, director of preservation services for the Landmark
Society of Western New York, said that use of existing buildings should be
considered part of the plan.

"That's the greenest of the options. Rather than using materials for a new
infrastructure and duplicating facilities, you can give new life by reusing
buildings," she said.

One of the sites that could emerge is a group of parking lots between
West Broad and West Main streets owned by companies that have been
managed by developer Peter Formicola. Formicola did not return telephone calls this week seeking comment, but in August he said he hoped that MCC considered his property, which is less than three acres, on the south corners of West Main Street and Plymouth Avenue.

The county leases those lots from Formicola, partly because such an
arrangement allows the county to have the first option to buy the property
if Formicola wants to sell, said Noah Lebowitz, spokesman for the county.

As is true elsewhere in the state, the county where the community college
is located is its sponsor. Some of the more than eight acres where Midtown Plaza is located could also emerge as a site. The city owns the land, and while some of the land is slated to be used for other projects, there could be space available for an MCC campus.

Land planned for Renaissance Square could also conceivably become
available. The project, which fell apart in the face of insufficient funding
and disagreements between the city and the county, was planned for a
stretch along East Main Street, between North Clinton Avenue and St.
Paul Street.

MCC would have built its campus midblock on East Main, alongside a
performing arts center. An off-street bus terminal would have been built
behind it. Some of the land is privately owned; other parcels are owned by
the city and county.

Heidi Zimmer-Meyer, president of the Rochester Downtown Development
Corp., said there are other area possibilities set forth in the guidelines, but
they are not as centrally located. One area, mostly parking lots, is north of West Main and west of Plymouth. Another, also with parking lots, is east of North Clinton between Pleasant and Andrews streets. Still another area is west of the Genesee River, south of the Inner Loop and north of Andrews Street.

ãWhen they get down to it, they will have to get a sense of what works
best,ä Zimmer-Meyer said.

City officials welcome MCC‰s continued commitment to finding a new
campus in downtown Rochester Ö and consider it an important ingredient
in revitalization.

ãThere is a whole variety of synergies,ä said Commissioner of
Neighborhood and Business Development Carlos Carballada, noting how
attracting more students downtown would help overall efforts, such as
attracting retail businesses and housing.

MCC‰s Damon City Campus is currently housed on the fourth and fifth
floors of the Sibley building.

Ray Shea, assistant to Kress, headed the committee that developed the
criteria. The Sibley building, he said, was designed for a department store
and does not have a layout conducive to having faculty offices near the
classrooms Ö an arrangement that would encourage greater interaction
between students and faculty.

A search for a new downtown campus took shape about a decade ago
with the proposed Advanced Technology Center, which had a $64.2
million price tag. Neither full funding nor a site was secured and, with the advent of Renaissance Square in 2004, the technology center faded into the
background.

Now that Renaissance Square is history, MCC is heading into a new
stage in its search for a downtown campus.

JGOODMAN@DemocratandChronicle.com

by RDDC.org