Officials displayed plans to renovate the road splitting De Montfort University's campus yesterday and revealed the scheme would cost about £2.5 million.
The university intends to landscape Leicester's Mill Lane to turn the road into a pedestrian area with trees and lawns.
Umesh Desai, De Montfort University's deputy director of estates services, said the aim of the plan was to create a safer and greener area along the busy route, which was closed to traffic last year, but remains heavily used by students, staff and pedestrians going from the West End to the city centre.
He said: "We recognise we are a city centre campus which has public roads through it and we want to knit our buildings together with high-quality public realm.
"We have already started doing that with Hawthorne Square and Magazine Square and this is the next step.
"We will also be demolishing quite a few 1960s modular buildings which are not that attractive."
Mr Desai said the overall cost of the Mill Lane project will be about £2.5 million and would be part of a wider £100 million revamp of the campus.
Yesterday, Leicester City Council, which is working closely with the university, confirmed it will retain ownership of the land, which will remain as a public highway.
The council has been involved in creating the designs shown off to the public yesterday, at the university's Trinity House chapel.
It also confirmed that no planning permission will be needed for the Mill Lane elements which are being "considered permitted works on the highway".
Steve Richards, the city council's project manager for the scheme, said the council would maintain responsibility for any major road maintenance but day to day tasks like litter picking and grass cutting would be carried out by university staff.
He said: "It will have its own identity as part of DMU but it will still be very much a public area to be enjoyed by people from the university and nearby residents.
"It will be a great improvement on what he wave along Mill Lane at the moment."
At lunchtime yesterday, only a handful of people had been in to see the plans on display and they were mainly university employees.
Construction work on the Mill Lane scheme is slated to start in June or July.
It is hoped they will be complete in November next year.
