“I get lost a lot,” Krane said. “It would be a lot easier to find buildings if they used traditional addressing.”

At the Aug. 30 Steering Committee meeting, a universitywide addressing project that will add traditional street addresses to all campus buildings was introduced.

Although the project is expected to reduce confusion among residents when looking for a specific building on campus, the main reason for the implementation is to allow for a more precise emergency response time among police personnel, MSU police Lt. Penny Fischer said at the meeting.

Because relying on verbal directions or building names can be confusing to 911 dispatchers, Fischer said the street addresses will allow for an exact location to describe where emergency responders are needed.

“We want you to think of yourself as at an address instead of at a building,” Fischer said.
The addresses tentatively will be place on the existing green signs that identify each building, she said.

Although firefighters at the East Lansing Fire Department are required to memorize the locations of all buildings on campus, East Lansing Fire Marshal Bob Pratt said adding street addresses to buildings would be beneficial when dealing with emergency response situations on campus.

“Sometimes 911 calls can be confusing to dispatchers,” Pratt said. “There have been times when buildings with similar sounding names, like Olin and Owen, have been confused.”

Since a lot of buildings on campus are large, Pratt said it would help to mark each main entrance with different addresses so responders can be directed to the appropriate location.

“Overall, it’s a good thing,” Pratt said. “The more specific we are, the faster response time will be.”
With more than 700 buildings on campus, Fischer said the addressing project will begin in south campus and move north.

The project is anticipated to be completed in April 2012.