Provost to host Stanford in Redwood City town hall

Provost John Etchemendy will hold a town hall meeting on May 10 to discuss the latest news and plans for the Stanford in Redwood City campus. Some 2,400 staff members will be relocated to the new campus beginning in 2019.

Provost John Etchemendy will hold a town hall meeting to discuss the new Stanford in Redwood City campus on Tuesday, May 10, at noon in Dinkelspiel Auditorium. He will be joined by University Architect David Lenox.

The meeting will be webcast. Details of where to view the webcast will be published in an upcoming Stanford Report.

After the hour-long town hall, an open house will be offered by members of the team involved in planning the new campus. The open house will feature a model of the site and renderings of the building exteriors, interiors, open spaces and courtyards.

In addition, a new website has been launched to share the latest news, developments, renderings and answers to frequently asked questions for the Stanford in Redwood City campus.

Redwood City campus

The new Redwood City campus for Stanford will be the topic of a town hall meeting Tuesday, May 10, in Dinkelspiel Auditorium. (Image credit: ZGF Architects)

The campus, scheduled to open in 2019, is the first significant expansion outside of the main university campus. Some 2,400 employees are expected to be located in Redwood City. Among the departments or schools that anticipate moving at least some staff members to Redwood City are Business Affairs; Land, Buildings and Real Estate; the Graduate School of Business; the Office of Development; Residential & Dining Enterprises; the School of Medicine; Stanford University Libraries; and University Human Resources.

The town hall and open house are designed to share with the Stanford community the university’s campus design plans as it begins the three-year process of interior workspace design and construction, according to Lucy Wicks, director of community relations. Wicks, who has been involved in presenting Stanford’s plans to Redwood City officials, also helped create the website in collaboration with Land, Buildings and Real Estate and University Communications.

“We hope the town hall, the open house and the website all convey the excitement those of us involved in the project feel,” Wicks said. “The new campus is going to be beautiful and a source of great pride for Stanford and for Redwood City. We’re really excited to get started with the groundbreaking and construction.”

The new website features, for instance, renderings of individual buildings and open spaces and videos in which administrators involved in the planning process describe their work. A video flythrough that imagines the campus as a whole will be added in the near future.

Wicks said there is a high degree of interest among Stanford staff members in plans for the new campus. Although many questions can readily be answered, she acknowledged that some cannot. Many details are still to be worked out.

“We know, for instance, that some departments are still discussing who among their staffs will be moving to the new campus since that move is still two and a half years away. But there is also much we do know and can share,” she said.

“We know we are going to have a robust transportation management system,” Wicks said. “We know we are going to apply to Redwood City many of the lessons learned from main campus sustainability initiatives, such as the recent Stanford Energy Innovations System. We know that there will be a wonderful employee fitness center, great dining choices, a child care center and a town square that will serve as a focus point for the campus.”

She added, “Right now our effort is focused on understanding how our current staff members work – across departments and as individuals – in order to design a campus that feels connected within itself and also back to the main campus.”

An executive committee is in place to provide oversight and direction for design and operations across the new campus community and to affirm design principles, space assignments and the governance process. The executive committee consists of Robert Reidy, vice president for land, buildings and real estate; Elizabeth Zacharias, vice president of human resources; Randy Livingston, vice president for business affairs and chief financial officer; and Timothy Warner, vice provost for budget and auxiliaries management. Reidy, Zacharias and Livingston will all have offices on the Stanford in Redwood City campus.

Wicks said a group of staff members representing those departments moving also are meeting as an advisory committee to help guide decision-making. The group is staffed by project managers Kathleen Kavanaugh in Real Estate Operations and Joe Kearney in the Department of Project Management. Among the subjects the advisory committee has discussed are change management, parking, transportation demand management, campus governance, security, operations, audio, visual and information technology standards, workplace planning, space guidelines, and project progress and schedule updates.

Also focused on the Stanford in Redwood City campus is the “Connect Stanford People Everywhere” committee, which is coordinating with the planning team and affected schools and departments to identify resources needed to facilitate communication between the two campuses. Committee members are working to lay the groundwork to improve technology-based communications well before the move to Redwood City.