The 25-acre West Campus Utah Valley State College could include a mass transit hub for Utah County, according to a five-year master plan.
According to the plan unveiled Tuesday night at a sparsely attended public meeting at UVSC's Ragan Theater, the terminal would serve light rail between Utah County and Salt Lake City if that is ever constructed, or possibly Amtrak, along with bus service.The terminal plan raised questions of how heavy automobile traffic might get around the planned campus and west to the 1200 South and Geneva Road intersection.
Duane Gardner, president of the Springwater Park Homeowners Association, raised concerns about how the West Campus and the terminal would affect that intersection. He said the roads coming into the intersection are not lined up now, resulting in traffic accidents. Springwater Park is a subdivision with some 125 homes along Geneva Road.
The West Campus would have a peripheral road with two entrances on the west side, said Leonard Grassley, an architect and consultant with FFKR, a Salt Lake City architectural firm.
The first building to go in will be the 51,000-square-foot Moun-tain-land Applied Technology Center, slated to cost more than $5 million. Two other buildings are planned for expansion, forming a vocational center for non-credit courses, many of which are now housed at the Provo campus on North University Avenue, now owned by Brigham Young University.
Lineman training classes are now held on the West Campus site, but officials haven't determined if that course will be a permanent part of the West Campus.
The UVSC rodeo grounds will occupy the east side of the West Campus, just north of a planned overpass connecting the two campuses. Lynn Brough, UVSC planning facilities director, said the overpass is planned now as just a crossing for small shuttle or maintenance vehicles, but the final determination has not been made. A shuttle crossing would allow a steeper grade over the freeway than an automobile crossing, he said. Brough said planners even considered a Disneyland-style monorail to connect the campuses.
Later plans also show an overpass connecting 800 South, north of the main campus, with the west side of the freeway. Brough said the college would buy more land next to the West Campus site, providing the price was right and the institution could get the funds.