Jazzy idea: New music center gets preliminary OK from PC

by PAUL MORTON

Associate editor

Oberlin Conservatory dean David Stull is hopeful parking requirements can be met quickly so work can begin next month on construction of a new jazz studies center.

Stull said construction on the Phyllis Litoff Jazz Studies Building could begin some time in June if the college can meet conditions for parking placed on it by planning commission in its conditional approval of the site plan. The parking plan includes additional parking spaces in the Grey Gables parking lot on West College Street, angled parking spaces on the north side of West College Street between Main and Professor streets, and a reconfiguring of the Oberlin Off-Street Parking lot.

According to a letter from planning director Gary Boyle outlining the conditions on the commission's approval, the new parking spaces must be completed before a building permit will be issued for the jazz studies building. Stull said while the commission approved the parking plan submitted by the college, he could not say the commission was satisfied.

"Using 'parking' and 'satisfaction' in the same sentence is unwise," Stull said. "We certainly have a plan for the building, but the parking situation in Oberlin is far more complex than a single project. We are continuing to meet with the city and merchants to work out a parking plan that can be a long-range solution."

According to the conditionally approved site plan, the jazz studies center will be located at the southeast corner of the Conservatory, immediately east of Robertson Hall. In that location, it will eliminate 31 parking spaces, but the parking plan would replace those and add an additional 32 spaces.

Eight of those spaces will come from a reconfiguration of the Oberlin Off-Street Parking lot, including allowing merchant parking in several spaces in the college lot between the jazz center and Lorenzo's Pizzeria.

"The college brought that offer forward," Boyle said. "They negotiated with Off-Street Parking. I think Off-Street Parking had a lease arrangement for some of the area where they wanted to build."

Yet another condition is a development agreement with the city for infrastructure improvements in the city right-of-way on College Place. That agreement would require approval by city council.

Stull said the Phyllis Litoff Jazz Studies Building will include a world class recording studio, classrooms that will also serve as practice rooms, and offices for the music theory and music history departments. The basement of the building will include archival storage space for collections of jazz recordings, including the Neumann jazz collection and the Selch collection.

He said the Neumann collection, being donated by Jim and Susan Neumann of Chicago, is the largest private collection of jazz recordings in the United States. He said the Neumanns had sought to donate their collection to other colleges and universities in Chicago, but no one had room for it.

"Initially they wanted to donate them to Oberlin, but we didn't have room for it," Stull said. "This collection is more than 125,000 recordings. The Conservatory's current recording collection, spanning all genres and all music history is about 90,000 recordings. And the Neumann collection is utterly chronological, from the beginnings of jazz to the present. It's a remarkable collection, and we're thrilled to have it."

He said the college has plans to digitize the recordings and make the digital recordings available on the campus network. The recordings could then be used in classroom settings, in practice sessions, or in any number of ways, Stull said.