By Gintautas Dumcius
Reporter Correspondent

UMass-Boston's latest proposals to significantly change the campus over the next twenty-five years were largely met with public silence as university officials laid out potential plans to sparse crowds of Dorchester residents.

In two meetings over the past week, university officials presented three conceptual plans for rearranging the Columbia Point campus, including a 5 to 10 year phase that would yield two academic buildings, a parking garage and 1,000 beds for students. That first phase of the expansion and razing of the campus is expected to cost around $600 million.

But the meetings, held for Dorchester community members in the university's Campus Center, were lightly attended. At both meetings, held last Thursday and Monday evening, about two dozen individuals showed up, nearly two-thirds of them UMass officials. The small crowd on the rainy Thursday prompted one of the associates from Chan Krieger Sieniewicz, the firm hired to design the campus plans, to say, after his microphone briefly cut out, "There's a small enough crowd where I don't need this."

The few who did attend left wide-eyed from drinking the plans in and offered mixed reactions. The plans, set to start to bring the school to capacity for the 15,000 students it seeks to have enrolled by 2010. Some pointed to the current state of the campus, which is crumbling from shoddy construction when the campus was first built in the 1970s and deterioration from the salt on the roads and in the air.

"It's a travesty," said Betsy Drinan, a Columbia-Savin Hill resident, who liked the open space nature of the plans. "I hope they build [the buildings] better [this time]."

The potential plans also include creating more of a neighborhood feel, with streets, a hotel and conference center, a water shuttle service, wind turbines close to the JFK Library, and a new fitness and recreation center.

But one item has continually and predictably drawn concern from Dorchester residents: student housing.

"The dorms? I don't know," Drinan said, when asked.

Others said putting dorms on campus opens a "Pandora's Box."

"It will snowball," said Paul Nutting, a former president of the Columbia-Savin Hill Civic Association and UMass-Boston alumnus.

The original mission of UMass-Boston, when it was first created, was to serve non-traditional students, he said. "They're not targeting the older student anymore."

UMass officials say the Dorchester campus would remain primarily a commuter school, but also point to surveys where 25 percent of students who don't come to UMass-Boston cite lack of on-campus housing as a reason, along with 20 percent who say they don't come because of the poor state of physical facilities.

"Right now, there is no university-sponsored housing, where parents and kids could feel the university is looking out for this space," said Ellen O'Connor, the campus's vice chancellor for administration and finance.

Community residents weren't included in the master planning process that spawned the conceptual layouts that included dorms, said Tim Seiber, a UMass-Boston anthropology professor and Dorchester resident.

"We've done our best to reach out," O'Connor said, adding that the master planning process is far from finished. Opportunities to comment will continue to be available, she said.

The final concept plan, for now, at least, of how the campus will look over the next twenty-five years goes before the UMass Board of Trustees on December 14.