Behind the gates of J.J. Pickle Research Campus
Behind the gates of J.J. Pickle Research Campus
Written by Rachel Youens Sunday, 07 October 2007
If you’ve seen an episode of the cable TV show Myth Busters, you can just about picture what the inside of the J.J. Pickle Research campus looks like.
Stacks of concrete slabs bake in the sun to test the strength of aggregate. Next door, scientists pour water fed from the campus water tower into chutes to test asphalt damage. The University of Texas main campus downtown may be where most of the university’s students are, but the real atom-splitting, bridge-exploding action is happening in Northwest Austin.
Although the campus is surrounded by a razor wire-topped chain link fence with a security guard posted at the entry, associate dean for research Randall Charboneau says the fence is more to keep out strangers than to keep in secrets.
“We’re not trying to be secretive; I think the security might give it that impression, but we’re actually quite open with what goes on here. It’s just a closed campus, the same as UT’s main campus.”
History
The campus began as a magnesium plant built by the federal government during World War II. After the war ended in 1946, the federal government declared the 402-acre plant surplus and the University of Texas obtained a lease agreement. Three years later, the university negotiated a contract with the help of then-Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson to purchase the site. Rather than cash payments, the federal government would deduct from the plant’s price tag for every public benefit project that was produced there.
The campus has gone through name changes from the Military Physics Research Lab to Balcones Research Center and finally in 1994 to the J.J. Pickle Research Campus, named after the congressman who was one of the center’s supporters. Today, UT owns a total of 450 acres; less than half make up the J.J. Pickle campus. The remaining land is made up of vacant, wooded land on the west side of MoPac, in the Gateway area.
Research
The research coming out of the Pickle campus has had effects reaching far beyond the university or even the state of Texas. After the fall of the World Trade Center towers, the laboratory researched the thermal effects on metals, helping to keep bridges and buildings safe.
One of the first travelers to make it into space and back was a rhesus monkey trained on the campus. This December, the Advanced Computing Center hopes to unveil Ranger, the world’s fastest computer, in conjunction with Sun Microsystems. The project is funded by a $59 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
The departments
Seventeen departments call the campus home, and the clash of so many different fields account for the Myth Busters vibe of random experiments.
At the Center for Electromechanics, within the Pickle campus, much of the work focuses on energy storage, according to Charboneau. The school has done work with gyroscopes as a way to soften the motion of a stop. For example, the lurching motion passengers experience when a bus stops at a traffic light could be avoided by channeling the energy into a gyroscope. One of the school’s recent accomplishments is the creation of a new supercooled engine capable of a new level of energy use.
The University of Texas is the only school in the nation licensed to run a reactor since the accident at Three Mile Island. The 1.1 megawatt reactor, rebuilt in 1989, is part of the University’s Nuclear Engineering Teaching Laboratory.
Many of the specimens at the Texas Natural History Museum, located on the University’s main campus, begin their preservation at Pickle. When the ancient remains of the “Leanderthal” woman were found in Leander in 1982, they were brought to the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory to be studied.
Future development
Despite the campus’ prime location with The Domain being constructed next door and the pressure from the city’s planning and zoning department on behalf of the North Burnet/Gateway neighborhood plan, the university has no plans to sell or develop any more of the land. The university’s main campus and J.J Pickle Campus are similar in size, but J.J. Pickle is only one tenth as built out, Charboneau said.
The university has allowed some land to be developed for commercial projects using long-term leases rather than selling the land. The Ross Dress for Less, Office Depot and Floor and Décor located along Braker Lane are on university land, as is the new Arbor Walk shopping center along MoPac. Simon signed a $130 million, 52-year lease with the university for the site.
In 1999, then-university president Larry Faulkner organized a committee headed by Charboneau to create a master plan for the campus. Planning firm Carter & Burgess was hired for $1 million to help find a solution, and planners Ayers/Saint/Gross released renderings of J.J. Pickle with student quads. This committee even left a spot at the J.J. Pickle campus for the George W. Bush Presidential Library, which the university was bidding on at the time. The vacant land closest to Burnet Road was originally set aside to build University housing, but Charboneau said that the complication that kept them from building residential units then still persists today.
“Without dependable transportation, the University can’t have lots of people living here. The bus system is the only way for students to get from here to the main campus. At one point there was even talk of building an underground tunnel between the main campus.”
The eight-mile subway system’s $40 million dollar price tag made the option unfeasible. The MetroRail, which begins running next year, will pass close by the campus between Metric Boulevard and Burnet Road, but real estate negotiations for the rail stop are still pending.
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