Alumni, if you think you’ve seen a lot of changes to Emory’s campus since you left, you haven’t seen anything yet.

A new proposal could become one of the most ambitious and far-reaching components of the Campus Master Plan. Over the course of 10 to 15 years, Emory would essentially swap Clairmont Campus and Emory Healthcare.

At Clairmont, the first building to go would be the Student Activity and Academic Center, along with the field, tennis courts and pools. Then, as the new Emory Clinic begins to take shape in its place, new apartments would be built along Clifton Road where the Clinic stands now. Eventually, all of the amenities of Clairmont would be duplicated on Clifton or elsewhere on campus.

To unify the new apartments and the rest of campus, Clifton Road could be narrowed to three lanes, with a grassy median constructed down its center. Along with the plan for a new academic quadrangle where the hospital currently stands, the entire project would practically double the size of Emory’s campus.

Why are they considering such a mammoth project, less than five years after the SAAC was opened? First, this could actually be cheaper. The original plan called for underground parking at the new clinic, but Emory discovered that it would cost as much as $60,000 a parking space to blast through the rock beneath Clifton Road. Given those prices, it would be cheaper to continue to utilize the large parking deck at Clairmont and let undergraduates use the Lowergate deck.

In addition, the proposal would move students closer to campus and Emory Healthcare workers closer to the hospital — no more riding on the C shuttle to and from cars in the Starvine Parking Deck. Beds in the new health care center would have a better view of Lullwater Park, and fewer height constraints would allow for a taller hospital.

It boggles the mind to even consider a plan of this scope — to think of Clairmont trading places with the hospital and clinics. But once you get past the initial reaction of “wow,” it’s easy to see the logic behind this proposal.

Traffic in the Clifton corridor would be significantly lessened. No longer will upperclassmen live in their own separate island on Clairmont — students will be more centrally located, and Emory will be a more coherent campus because of it.

Yes, this new proposal will mean more construction and more disruption on campus for the next eight years as new dorms are built. But explosives and jackhammer work underneath Clifton Road while the new hospital is going up isn’t exactly our idea of a peaceful spring day either.

It’s good to see that the administration is open to adapting its master plan. It’d be all too easy to dismiss a plan that calls for the destruction of a set of barely 10-year-old residential buildings. We’re glad they’re committed to doing what’s right for campus now, rather than constraining their decision-making based on what’s been done in the past.

We also applaud them for getting the word out on this plan in time to hear feedback before it goes to the board of trustees in February. We hope students will take advantage of this opportunity to ask questions and voice their opinions on this plan. For our part, we’d also encourage the planners to make sure that they’re compensating for everything students lose from Clairmont as they lose it — pools, tennis courts, the SAAC field, the works.

We’re fine not being able to recognize campus when we come back to visit. We just don’t want it to lose anything after we’re gone.

The above staff editorial represent the majority opinion of the Wheel’s Editorial Board.