Preserving, Enriching Rice a Construction Priority

Preserving, Enriching Rice a Construction Priority

Renovating Wiess Residence Included in Campus Plan

The Rice campus is entering one of the most ambitious periods of construction since its founding. However, new teaching, research and living facilities are only part of the story. The university’s leadership has set as a top priority the preservation of the best of the existing Rice. William Barnett, chairman of the board of trustees, spoke to Rice News about the process.

Rice News: The first concern of everyone who loves Rice is that the new construction enrich, not diminish, the campus environment. What is the university doing to ensure that?

Barnett: The board and the university leadership, like all the Rice community, know what a treasure this campus is. It is a university endowment to be preserved just as much as our financial resources. We take quite literally the term "trustee." We hold a trust for future generations and want to ensure that we hand on to them as beautiful and as functional a campus as our predecessors left us. We pay enormous attention to that trust, right down to the protection of trees and the color of bricks.

For the current phase of construction, we employed a master-planning firm to ensure that we both stayed in the spirit of long-standing plans and planned well for the future. We were gratified to hear from them that of all the universities with which they were familiar, Rice had excelled in creating an excellent master plan and sticking with it.

RN: It’s hard to miss the construction part of that plan. Where does the preservation come in?

Barnett: Almost everywhere. Consider, for example, the Old Chemistry Building, now Keck Hall. It would have been at least one-third cheaper to demolish it and start over than it was to renovate it. However, we made the decision that this was a historic and beautiful building, part of the campus fabric, and that it was worth the extra cost to not only preserve it, but to enhance it.

Another example is green space. We were very proud of Rice students when we consulted with them. We said, "The once seemingly endless frontier on the west side of campus is disappearing, and we’ll have to make hard choices about things like parking." And they said, "We’ll give up parking, but save the green space." In the end, we found a way to save both, by adding an underground parking garage beneath the new Jones School building. Again, it costs moreÑabout four times as much as an above-ground structure—but we believe that, spread over the future decades of the university, it was a fair price to preserve the trees and green spaces that make this campus such a great place. The board refers to underground parking as being like acquiring new land.

RN: You mention that the campus is running out of wide-open spaces. What is the board doing to deal with future needs?

Barnett: We try to look at the big picture. Among other things, the trustees and the university leadership held an all-day retreat this fall to think about the long-term future. At it, we reaffirmed two long-standing principles: that we would continue to use existing land with care and forethought; and that we would watch for opportunities to obtain more space for future generations. Thus, Rice owns considerable land to the west of the stadium and in Rice Village. Someday, we may want that for direct academic uses. We also are grateful when friends donate land adjacent to the campus, such as the Wiess Residence, across Sunset Boulevard. Such property doesn’t come your way every day, and it is of great strategic value to the university’s future.

RN: Is that property just a long-term investment or do you have specific plans for it?

Barnett: The board has been considering the Wiess Residence for over a decade, largely because that particular property involves so many constraints. As I mentioned, property adjacent to campus is immensely valuable in a strategic, as well as a market, sense. So, we would not want to sell it.

In addition, the Wiess Residence has very significant local historic value: It was built for Harry Wiess, who was not only one of the most important trustees in Rice’s history, but also the co-founder of Humble Oil, which became Exxon. And it has emotional value to the Wiess family, which has been a tremendous supporter of Rice. So, we would not want to demolish it. To the contrary, there are strong reasons to restore it.

But then we face the issue of what to do with it once it is restored. The Wiess Residence is legally bound by neighborhood covenants that absolutely bar its use for anything other than a single-family residence. We have asked for a variance over and over again, always unsuccessfully. So, though it would make an excellent alumni house or conference facility, we cannot use it for such purposes.

Given the constraints, and given the fact that time and weather continue to take a heavy toll on the house, we have decided to move forward on renovation. We are going to finance the work completely through donations, and the board has directed that the money generally come from sources that do not draw gifts away from any other university purpose. We will not proceed until we have the full amount in hand, so we are looking at some time before we even start renovation.

After we start, it will not be completed for several years, and what its exact use will be is yet to be determined. However, it obviously will have to be a single-family residence. Once the renovation is done, we may ask the president and his wife to move in. Malcolm and Elizabeth Gillis are very happy where they are. They strongly prefer to stay in O’Connor House and right in the heart of campus. But they understand that this may be the only option to make use of this valuable property and that such a move would free O’Connor House for other uses, since it is not subject to the same constraints."

RN: Are there other examples of preservation amid the change?

Barnett: We continue to be partners with the University Place Association and others to defend the wonderful trees that surround campus. And speaking of partnerships with our neighbors, our beautiful new graduate housing is a good example. We worked closely with the neighbors on the aesthetics and other facets of the graduate housing and ended up with a great home for our graduate students while preserving the character of the neighborhoods around us.

RN: Are there any areas where preservation is not a top priority?

Barnett: (laughing) Well, I have to admit that there were no votes to keep the old Tidelands Motel, the previous graduate housing. As soon as we complete asbestos abatement, weÕll raze it. In fact, Malcolm has volunteered to drive the first bulldozer. That, by the way, will give us another piece of land in a very valuable location. We have no plans yet for how we might use it, but we’ll give it, like all these questions, careful thought.