Provincial government buys Diepenbeek campus car park

With student housing and campus heart, Diepenbeek campus becomes American-style campus

The provincial government of Limburg is buying the central car park of the Diepenbeek education campus from Flanders for over 2.6 million euros. Under the guidance of POM Limburg, the car park will in future be transformed into a campus heart with all kinds of facilities and student quarters.

In 2020, POM Limburg designed a master plan for the Diepenbeek education campus, which in future will be christened Limburg DC. Limburg DC will be a lively, sustainable, green campus based on the American model, where knowledge institutions, the business world and stakeholders can meet. To realise this ambition, the provincial government of Limburg will buy the current car park from the Agency for Roads and Traffic (AWV) of Flanders for 2,663,640 euros. With this purchase, the provincial government and POM Limburg are taking further control of the development of the education campus in Diepenbeek.

Shovel in the ground
"We have since started developing the Health Campus and the Construction Campus. A gateway building and a parking building were designed for the first campus and a parking building for the Construction Campus. The ground will be broken for both buildings this year," explained Tom Vandeput, provincial executive member for Economy and chairman of POM Limburg. "But to achieve a true campus experience, we want to tackle the entire campus. For that, this purchase is necessary, because the current car park is the heart of the campus."

Campus Heart
In the future, the car park will be transformed into a campus heart, with student accommodation on the sides and student facilities, sandwich bars and other services on the ground floor. In the next phase, the area between the university, UCLL and these facilities - the current car park - will be transformed into the central heart of the campus, with an event meadow, slow connections, meeting places and lots of sustainable greenery. During the works, the car park will be retained, to be moved to a parking building to be developed at a later stage. A jury will select a private party to develop the student lots and the campus heart.

Modal shift
"An important element for us is the connection between Limburg DC and the surrounding cities and towns. This will be through fast cycle connections on the one hand, but we hope that Spartacus can also play an important role in this. There really is a need for a modal shift. Together with the knowledge institutions, we will sit down with the minister about this soon," said Tom Vandeput.