Drury lends students' input to Brookline development

Growth is coming to Brookline, and with the help of Dury University, the town will be ready for it.

The community is set for expansion because the recently completed section of James River Freeway runs through Brookline. The section connects U.S. Highway 60 West and Interstate 44, and has an interchange at Greene County MM in Brookline.

Drury, which in 2002 inherited from Drury alumna Christiana Garton more than 500 acres of farmland neighboring Brookline, is using students from the Breech School of Business Administration and Hammons School of Architecture to put together a development plan for the city.

The first planning meeting was Jan. 13.

"We're just at the front end of the process. We've had several phone conferences, but this was the first sit-down meeting we've had," said Drury University President John Moore.

Said Ruth Sawyer, Brookline city clerk, "We talked about how we can work together to develop a good planned development. We talked about the layout of possible streets, sewer system, infrastructure and utilities."

Brookline, which already has held some public planning meetings, is intent on managing its growth.

"We're trying to control our own boundaries, make it a quality place to live and make informed decisions on what's going on," said Keith Roberts, broker at Empire Realtors and chairman of Brookline's Planning and Zoning Committee.

"All of a sudden Brookline is in a spotlight. With three major east-west arteries and a connector to all three, we're obviously going to have growth. We have to be able to manage that growth in a planned effort."

For Drury students it's an opportunity to take their skills out of the classroom and put them to use in the real world.

"We often do things cross-discipline in nature because the real world doesn't break itself down into biology, history, political science," Moore said. "We emphasize a lot of cross-discipline work. It is a learning opportunity and a real-world laboratory for the students."

Tim Rosenbury, vice president at Butler, Rosenbury & Partners, is the adjunct instructor for the architectural studio class that will work on the Brookline plan this semester.

"The work will be student-level work, not professional-level. We will probably deal with things on a conceptual level but not go into the kind of depth and sophistication that a practicing professional would," Rosenbury said. "One of the things that we've talked about is generating some development standards. In other words, going beyond mere zoning.

" Over the next few semesters, the architectural school will be looking at Brookline in more and more detail. Right now we hope to set the baseline for the development of a later body of work."

Students from Dr. Jim Murrow's marketing class will use focus groups to determine what the city wants and needs.

"We'll be looking at the basic demand, trends, and talking to a lot of people to get the basic information to see what would be good," said Murrow. "We'll be asking people like planning gurus what they think, what constraints there are. We'll be asking the citizens what they're interested in having done. We'll be asking experts like Realtors and developers to see what their ideas would be in a perfect world."

Murrow said it will be an opportunity to let students get a taste of the real world.

"Somebody may come up with an idea that makes sense for them, but there are other parties involved that need (to be) talked with and brought in," Murrow said. "That means that there is compromise and negotiation. No matter how good a textbook is, it uses logic. People have emotions. We're more rationalizing than rational a lot of times."

Drury students have participated in other similar projects.

One of Murrow's classes worked on a project to rehabilitate Farmington's inner city.

"It was a student project, not like something they paid a consultant $50,000 for. It has no bells and whistles, just good solid data. That's what we're hoping for with Brookline," Murrow said.

Roberts and Sawyer hope for good things from the cooperative effort with Drury University.

Roberts called the effort an "educational process" for the community and region, as well as the students.

"Any visionary planning we can do will be for everybody's benefit. You can't expect a high quality of life to happen; you've got to plan for it," Roberts said.