As preparations for commercial development of the J.J. Pickle Research Campus begin, discussions have surfaced about the future of the off-site campus, such as connecting it and the main campus with a city-wide light-rail or magnetic monorail system.
The campus, located off of Mopac Boulevard in North Austin, has traditionally been used to conduct research on defense contracts. The lease to Simon Property Group would allow for construction of restaurants and stores, including a Home Depot. In 2003, the University leased the 46-acre space running along east Mopac Boulevard to the Simon Property Group, a nation-wide developer that manages property such as Barton Creek Mall.
"I think Pickle will continue to expand for other uses besides research if mass transit puts it within a reasonable shot of main campus," said Chief Financial Officer Kevin Hegarty, adding that the University is talking with the city of Austin to work out the best way to connect the two campuses with a city-wide light-rail system.
Railroad tracks separate the commercial area from the existing campus. The decision to lease out the tract came from the realization that crossing the tracks with some sort of bridge would require city permission and would be very expensive, Hegarty said.
This land is not the only property that the University has leased out. The Brackenridge Tract, located on both sides of Lake Austin Boulevard, houses a city golf course, and has been offered as a potential site for the George W. Bush Presidential Library.
Simon Property Group would pay an incrementally increasing rental fee, beginning at $1 million per year. The sum total after the 52-year lease concludes would be approximately $138 million. The money earned would go into the University's general operations fund, but for fiscal year 2006, the money will be used mainly to offset the rising cost of natural gas. The University expects to spend $41 million as opposed to this year's $24 million.
The University retains the right of final approval and wants the construction of upscale stores, Hegarty said.
"They can't build a gentleman's club, and they can't just build any Home Depot," Hegarty said.
Certain departments within the research center are expanding as well.
The Applied Research Lab-oratory, which does contract research for the U.S. Department of Defense, is renovating and adding on to its building, using funds indirectly recovered by research grants, Faulkner said.
The ground has also been broken to open a $20.4 million joint facility which would contain the Institute for Geophysics and the Texas Advanced Computing Center, said UT President Larry Faulkner. He added that construction has begun on a $5.5 million imaging facility, which would be looking into new ways of using Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
Linking the Pickle campus back to the main campus has re-emerged as an issue in light of the new constructions.
Officials, including Hegarty, Faulkner, and Vice President for Employee and Campus Services Pat Clubb, predict that for the short-term, the Pickle campus will primarily remain a research facility.
Integrating the two campuses would require transit time to last about 10 minutes, said Ben Streetman, dean of the College of Engineering. The trip typically takes about half an hour. The cost for a one stop subway would be about $100 million, or "what a building costs these days." He advocates an elevated rail using magnetic levitation, which the University could use as a tool to study the best ways to move people in urban environments.
"There's always been a need to integrate Pickle with main campus, but there's really nothing on the horizon to tightly tie the two," said Clubb, who has been directly working with the city of Austin.
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