This story has been updated to clarify the "lifetime" appointments of successor trustees.

The packed city council chambers in Clemson on Monday night brought a sense of déjà vu. It wasn't the first time local residents were stirred to action by the plans of Clemson University.

Multiple conflicts related to infrastructure, student housing, business, communication and more have recently revealed increasing strain in the partnership between the city and university.

Many remember a simpler time as progress has marched on.

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At its fullest on a football game day, Memorial Stadium would be ranked the fourth-largest city in South Carolina based on U.S. Census Bureau data. On a regular day Clemson is a small community with a campus of about 30,000 students and employees and a city of 16,000 people, ranking outside the state's top 25.

But nothing in Clemson is as small as it used to be, and that's brought a need for changes.

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Back in 2016, the Clemson University board of trustees approved a Duke Energy combined heat and power plant for campus, though most Clemson residents did not find out about the project until months later.

“I come home one weekend and everything had gone the wrong way,” said state Rep. Gary Clary, R-Pickens. “Constituents had discovered, not through the university, that the heat and power plant was going right up in their backyard, right at the edge of the university property.”

When he started looking into the project, Clary said he discovered “it was under a cloak of darkness.”

Residents spoke out against the plan at a city council meeting on April 3, 2017, and the council unanimously decided to draft a resolution opposing the power facility, minutes from the meeting show. Clary said he and others intervened by reaching out to the university, which decided to move that project away from the nearby neighborhood.

At the same time, though, the university planned a related power substation to be placed by Pendleton Road and Highway 76, down the road from Clemson Montessori School. The news of the substation did not reach residents who live nearby, who learned details of the plan in January.

And on Feb. 18, a crowd returned to city council chambers to voice dissent.

The mayor promised to write a letter to Duke Energy and the university conveying the community's frustration, but he also said he could not change the location. The decision had been made by the university and Duke, and the city does not have power over the matter as the land for the substation belongs to the university, the mayor said.

The city and the university are separate entities, separate municipalities, and there are challenges in their coexistence.

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Clemson 'doesn't work with the same harmony,' mayor says

Traditionally, officials say, Clemson has been seen as a model of working “town-and-gown” relations — a phrase used to describe an intertwined city and university. The separate entities, however, no longer share the same level of communication, a reality that is leaving unsolved problems around housing, transportation and the future of downtown.

To Clemson Mayor J.C. Cook, the perfect town-gown relationship is like a marriage, where spouses may not agree on everything but work out differences.

“Now it is more like two businesses than a marriage" at Clemson, Cook said. “Two business can get along and make things work, but it doesn’t work with the same harmony.”

The discord comes in a large part from growing pains.

Clemson University President Jim Clements said it is easier to have a smooth relationship with the city when there are no cranes swinging or dirt being moved. Construction equipment has been a staple on campus as the university works to upgrade infrastructure and add new buildings.

"Our bond ratings are the highest they've ever been," Clements said. "Money has been the cheapest it's ever been, so if you look around the country, universities have been building while you have access to great money to get low construction costs."

That construction, which has been necessary to accommodate more students and update long-aging facilities, has caused frustration for some.

“We try as much as we can to value and love the community where we live and serve, but the last couple years have been more stressful,” said Clements, who described many of the construction projects as long overdue.

Pressure has built around the construction along State 93, specifically. Since March 2018, the university has worked to upgrade underground utilities beneath the road, causing detours. In 2017, the university took over ownership of part of the road, now called Walter T. Cox Boulevard, from the South Carolina Department of Transportation.

Joe Galbraith, associate vice president of strategic communications, said all of the State 93 construction — delayed at points by weather and the handling of materials, Clements said — is scheduled to be completed by August 2019.

Residents have criticized the university for a lack of communication about the project.

“That highway is open when the university needs it to be open and then it is worked on when they don't need it, and it is affecting the downtown businesses,” Clary said. “When you’re the 800-pound tiger, you don’t necessarily feel like you need to be as engaged or as cooperative.”

Ray Stratford lives in Anderson and has owned Brioso Fresh Pasta in downtown Clemson for 11 years. This spring, he is moving the business to Powdersville, and he considers himself lucky that his lease was up. The construction along State 93 created “misery” for his restaurant, he said.

He blamed the construction and the traffic changes it caused for a 50-percent drop in sales. He said he has had to reduce staff size from 35 to 14.

Changes on campus at Clemson affect businesses and people off campus

Construction isn't the only challenge the university has created for city life, Stratford and Clary said.

More on-campus dining options have been added, which Stratford said have eroded visits to downtown. In 2016 and 2018, the university opened the Core Campus and Douthit Hills complexes. Between these, the campus has added a Raising Cane's, Which Wich, Twisted Taco, Freshens and two Starbucks locations.

Clary said a tight food contract the university signed with Aramark Corporation Campus Services prevents local businesses from catering small campus events.

In order to accommodate a growing number of prospective students, the university moved the starting point for campus tours from the Alumni Association building near downtown to the Strom Thurmond building in the heart of campus in January 2018. This also pulled away visitors from restaurants and businesses off campus, Clary said.

More than 63,000 guests came through the downtown visitors center location in 2017, according to data from the center.

To Stratford, there's been a lack of university effort to help downtown businesses, and he finds that ironic given how students lean on the off-campus community. He said he might have 10 student organizations walk into his restaurant in a single day to ask for gift cards and support for their causes.

"Even if residents and businesses are consulted, they are rarely considered," Clary said.

In the past, other entities balanced the power of the university, one longtime resident and professor said.

“When I came here there were textile plants and textile executives,” said Alan Grubb, who is in his 51st year as a history professor at Clemson. “The university was not the only or chief employer as it is now. The textile executives didn’t see eye to eye with the university.”

Now, the university is the area's primary economic engine. The school is the largest employer in Pickens County, according to Alliance Pickens. At $1.3 billion, the university’s budget for the 2019 fiscal year is 52 times the size of the city’s $25 million budget.

Brad White, a Clemson native and Daniel High School alum who graduated from Clemson University in 2008, serves on the planning commission for the city. He does not believe the city and university are on the same page.

He said the city needs time to “catch its breath” from growth at the university and in the town thanks to the university's growth.

Between 2009 and 2017, the city population grew by 23.5 percent while the university's combined graduate and undergraduate populations grew by 27.6 percent.

According to the city's 2014 Comprehensive Plan, city growth is "highly influenced" by the growth at the university. The university population has traditionally grown at about 2 to 3 percent annually. From 2016 to 2017, the student population grew at a rate of more than 4 percent, although the targeted growth for the next eight years is expected to be closer to 2 percent.

Clements said the university has created a "strategic enrollment management group" to make sure growth is targeted carefully to programs and Clemson's campuses.

“Maybe the board of trustees doesn’t understand the negative impacts of the university growing so quickly,” White said. “If they did realize it, they would pull back on the growth.”

As the number of students continues to grow at the university, developers are looking to capitalize on a future need for housing. Clements said the university does not have any additional student housing projects currently in the pipeline. That leaves a gap to be filled by the city.

Community members have expressed resistance to a proposed development along Keowee Trail that would place hundreds of students across from a city park.

Clemson is not alone among colleges facing potential housing problems. Beth Bagwell, the executive director for the International Town and Gown Association, said a 2018 survey found housing was among the top concerns among the members of the organization, which include cities, towns and universities.

And transit for the growing campus has also complicated town-and-gown interactions. In 2017, after 21 years of the university and city sharing a system, Clemson Area Transit lost a competitive bid to serve as the university's transportation provider, so the campus and city now have different systems. The campus Tiger Transit system primarily circles campus and connects commuting students to parking lots while the CAT Bus routes mainly connect Pendleton and Central to the campus.

Town and Gown is born at Clemson

Driving onto campus from Old Greenville Highway, orange banners line the light poles to tout university rankings.

“Town-gown relations are great,” one sign reads, citing a No. 6 ranking from the Princeton Review. The ranking is not based on a survey of citizens or administrators but rather student ratings of “how well they get along with the local community.”

While the ranking does not reflect the current experiences of many residents, it is a reminder that Clemson has a track record of cooperation.

The Joint City/University Advisory Board designed to foster relations between the two entities still meets monthly with members who know one another well, many of whom have collaborated for years.

The International Town and Gown Association was formed in Clemson in 2008 as the brainchild of Larry Abernathy.

Abernathy died in office in 2012 after 28 years as the mayor of Clemson. While mayor, he worked closely with James Barker, a former Clemson classmate who served as the university president from 1999 to 2013.

“Both of them truly believed in the town-and-gown relationship and making both entities better,” Clary said.

The two leaders had regular meetings and Barker was closely tapped into the community, Clements and Cook said. When Abernathy died, Barker described him as a "classmate, my partner in serving this community and my dear friend.”

“President Barker spent so much time working with the community,” Clements, Barker’s successor, said. “He got an A+, off the charts. He did a great job with it.”

For residents and alumni who remember that, perception of the current climate can be a surprise.

“A lot of older grads move back here and they remember this idyllic place where they went to college, and it’s not the same and it shouldn’t be,” Clary said. “A lot of years have elapsed and things have changed, and that’s called progress.”

Jerry Chapman grew up going to Clemson football games and graduated from the university. He worked in North Carolina for years before retiring in Clemson. He was elected to Clemson City Council in 2014.

"My assumption about the relationship when I first came on council was that it was a perfect," said Chapman, recipient of the 2019 Abernathy/Cox One award that honors an individual working to improve both the city and university. "I dug deeper and learned it was very multifaceted."

Changes in leadership bring changes in relationships at Clemson

Today Clements relies on individuals in his 14-member executive leadership team to be the voice, ears and face of the school for the city.

Clements' charge from trustees is different from that of Barker and more focused on fundraising, Clements said. That keeps him from spending as much face-time with Clemson residents.

“They needed somebody a little more national, so I am involved in a lot of national things,” Clements said. “The need for fundraising in higher education is pretty serious, so we’re raising a lot of money, but nobody knocks on the door and says, ‘Hey Jim, here’s a check for your students.’ I have to go get it, so I travel a lot."

Clements said he leans on his vice presidents and members of the Joint City/University Advisory Board to help communicate with the community both in Clemson and across the Upstate. For example, university vice president and chief of staff Max Allen serves on the board of directors for the Clemson Area Chamber of Commerce and the Greenville Chamber.

The last time Clements and Cook, the city's mayor, gathered for a scheduled one-on-one meeting was in April of 2017, said Mark Land, Clemson’s vice president of university relations.

In years past, the mayor and chair of the Joint City/University Advisory Board met with the president annually, Cook said.

“We extended that invitation this year, and it was never accepted,” Cook said.

After Clements and Cook were interviewed for this story and a city official asked again about meeting, Clements offered to set up a time to discuss relations. At the annual State of Clemson address on Feb. 19, Clements and Cook spoke and sat next to one another.

In his remarks at the event, Clements emphasized that the mayor could reach out to him at any time. Clements also announced his intention to create a new president's community advisory board. He said the details are still to be determined; Allen said it would probably be a group that would meet a few times a year.

Cook said he spoke with Clements at the lunch about revamping the Joint City/University Advisory Board and about ways to better keep in touch.

"We've got to change and make it work for today's times," Cook said of the town-gown relationship, indicating after the address that he was optimistic.

Complicating the relationship is that the university is actually a city unto itself, so it is not bound by the city of Clemson's ordinances. Since it was first founded, South Carolina state law has designated the university as a municipality, complete with a municipal court and the board of trustees as its governing body.

Clary said he has had ongoing problems communicating with the university, which he said he considers his largest constituent. There is not enough engagement between the university and trustees about what goes on in the city, Clary said.

"I can assure you that in the future those six [trustees] that are elected by the General Assembly are going to face some very strong questions from at least one member about the way that things are done," Clary said.

In total, there are 13 trustees — the six elected by the legislature and seven who can name their successors.

Trustee Mark Richardson, who is a successor trustee, said the university administration does keep him and fellow trustees well-apprised of what is happening in the city.

"I think that the relationship the university, student body and faculty have with one another is what all universities strive for," Richardson said. "I think the Clemson community relations are in a very good spot."

Trail among future projects for the university and the town of Clemson

As a member of the student government at the university, junior microbiology major Arianna Conti said she wanted to bridge the gap between students and the city. To do so, she founded the Tiger Wall Art Association, through which students are painting a mural on the side of the Tiger Sports Shop downtown.

“When I worked with the city government, they were so nice, so helpful,” Conti said. “They were excited that students were interested in doing something with the town.”

Conti said a lot of the same issues that impact residents, from construction to parking, are shared with students.

“We want to see a lot of the same things happen in Clemson," she said.

There are also bright spots in the town-and-gown relationship, according to Clary, Cook, Chapman and Johnson Link, Clemson's associate vice president for student affairs. They have lauded a tight working relationship between the city and university police departments, and the city and university share a fire department.

Link has served as both the city and university police chief in the past, and he was on the original Joint City/University Advisory Board in the 1980s. He said the university and city collaborated effectively recently to study dockless scooters, a concept that was turned down for testing at Clemson.

"The joint committee seems to work best when we have a project to work on," Link said.

The next project could be the Green Crescent Trail, a proposed biking and pedestrian trail that would touch and connect the campus, the university and surrounding areas.

"It just makes sense for us to try to make that system work together," Link said.

Allen, Clements' chief of staff, said the university has not yet made a decision about helping develop the trail.

"People look at us and think we have this cash or money," Allen said. "We don't have the kind of financial resources a lot of people think we have to contribute to those different things."

The university has asked Jennifer Goree, director of the Healthy Campus initiative, to serve as a liaison with the group working on the trail.

With community momentum behind building the trail, Link is optimistic that it could be another opportunity for effective collaboration.

Interest in the project showed in January when the city council chambers filled with citizens wearing green shirts to show support for the trail. Among the green-clad supporters were university employees, some of whom spoke about how the trail could help attract new faculty.

"We are very interested in better connections between campus and surrounding communities," Goree said.

For Clemson professor and mom of three Mariah Magagnotti, a better relationship between the city and university could have helped her family avoid unknowns around the power substation to be built near her home on Pendleton Road.

On Monday, Magagnotti came to the city council meeting to share her frustrations over the substation, which she said she fears could increase her kids' risk of leukemia because of energy output.

"The university is a large, large fish in this pond, and I am grateful for them," Magagnotti said. "I teach there. I love my students. I love living in a college town, but at the same time, we live here year around, we raise our children here and we need this to be a safe place. We need to not be entirely squashed out by the needs of the university."

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