Could the past change the Purple Line?

Morrill Hall may soon become a county-designated historic site, and the latest snag in the ongoing Purple Line saga.

The Purple Line, a proposed light-rail system that would connect Metro lines from Bethesda to New Carrollton, has long been embroiled in a battle about where to place its route through the campus. Student organizations, city officials and the Maryland Transit Administration have long supported running the line down Campus Drive, while the university administration has remained steadfast in its opposition to this route.

University administrators have offered up multiple alternatives to Campus Drive, including alignments down Stadium Drive and, most recently, Preinkert Drive, because they say electromagnetic interference and vibrations from the trains would interfere with nearby lab research.

“They put our research enterprise in jeopardy,” Vice President for Administrative Affairs Ann Wylie said.

A new plan that designates Morrill Hall, which is next to where the route would run down Preinkert Drive between LeFrak Hall and the South Campus Dining Hall, could discourage the MTA from approving the administration’s plan. Last Tuesday, the College Park City Council approved the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission’s preliminary historic sites plan, which would add Morrill and Calvert Halls to the county’s historic landmarks.

“This is a federally funded project and there is a required environmental review process, and part of that environmental review involves looking at any impacts to historic sites or places,” Terry Schum, director of the College Park Planning Department, said.

Mike Madden, the MTA’s Purple Line project manager, said this could be a problem.

“It is close to think Preinkert Drive alignment, and we have always raised that as a concern,” he said. “That structure wouldn’t be directly impacted, but it would certainly be in what historic experts call the viewshed.”

Other nearby historic buildings, including the Memorial Chapel, are just one reason why the MTA believes the project should be on Campus Drive, Madden added.

“We also think the Campus Drive alignment works better from an engineering and from a transit and transportation perspective,” he said.

But Wylie said an official historic designation would be irrelevant.

“Many of our buildings are of that ilk. Why does that matter?” she said. “Cole Field House is historic, too. I mean, I don’t think it matters — it doesn’t make any noise.”

Wylie added that the administration’s main issue is solely with the line’s proximity to research labs, of which there is only one near the Preinkert Drive alignment — in Marie Mount Hall — that Wylie said is being moved elsewhere.

“I think that everybody understands that they can’t put a train down here that will compromise our research enterprise,” she said. “I think the question is, can they produce a plan that would mitigate it, and we haven’t seen that yet.”

The MTA proposed a plan last October that would bury the lines carrying the electromagnetic current underground instead of hanging them overhead, reducing the vibrations and interference, but administrators were not convinced.

“This is not a political problem, this is a technical problem,” Wylie said.

Student Government Association City Council liaison and former SGA president Jonathan Sachs said both Campus Drive’s status as the main thoroughfare on campus and the historic conflicts with the Preinkert alignment are too important to ignore.

“I firmly believe that whether it qualifies as a historic site or not by the county, I think that they’re going to move forward cautiously because that piece of land means a lot to them, just like it does to me and the student body,” Sachs said.

Madden said he doesn’t know much longer the process will take, but he is optimistic.

“I’m hopeful that over the next couple of months, we will come to a consensus on which alignment the project should be on,” he said.

aisaacs@umdbk.com