Moving a step closer to setting their West Campus housing plans in stone, Penn State planners met with the State College Borough Council last night to work out a deal over traffic patterns.

Penn State wants to build about 200 new graduate student apartments in the area west of the State College bus station, near the White Golf Course.

It's the first new campus housing project in years.

Housing construction is scheduled to start in May, with the first students moving in Fall Semester 2002. More West Campus construction projects will follow.

Some residents have opposed the plan, in part because they say it will put more cars on residential streets.

"I don't know of anybody in my neighborhood, which is the Holmes-Foster neighborhood, who is not concerned about both the housing project and the long-term plans," said Barbara Minard, a borough resident.

Responding to complaints from residents, Borough Council members sought to make the university accountable for any additional traffic the projects create.

"The neighborhood needs to know that we are determined to protect them from further traffic," said council member Elizabeth Goreham.

As part of the compromise discussed last night, Penn State is restricted from putting in certain connecting roads without agreements from the Borough. The deal could be approved at the next Borough Council meeting, a week from today. The Borough has to either approve or reject Penn State's development plan by February 5.

The university has already agreed to separate the planned West Campus parking lots into two parts during the first phase of development.

Under the latest revision of the West Campus plan, the graduate student housing area will connect only to Sparks and Patterson Streets, near West College Avenue. The academic area — including a new lot to replace spaces lost by the School of Information Sciences and Technology building — will still connect only to North Atherton Street.

But later phases of the plan, years down the line, could see new roads running between these two sides of the West Campus. A new road might even divert some of the traffic westward into Ferguson Township.

Borough officials worried that Penn State's long-term West Campus plans, which are flexible, could change drastically.

"We're all going to retire, some sooner than others, and somebody else is going to take care of this," said Jeff Kern, chair of the borough's Commission for Pedestrian and Traffic Safety.

His words were especially relevant for Eliza Pennypacker, head of Penn State's Division of Campus Planning and Design, who said she would step down from her post later this month.

Pennypacker has steered the West Campus plan through many discussions with the Borough since she took her current job last January.

Her final day as planning and design head will be January 19, when she presents the West Campus plan to the Penn State Board of Trustees for approval.

She said she will continue to work part time for the university, but will also spend more time with her family. A search is underway for her replacement.