As students and faculty come back to Big Orange Country, it won’t be hard to notice large-scale construction and improvement projects on many corners of our campus.
From new academic buildings to improved services, the UT community will be a part of opening many new and renovated facilities over this new academic year.
Whether driving, bicycling, or walking, please be careful around construction sites and be sure to use the marked detours for pedestrians and motorists around the construction sites.
Students moving in this weekend will see the results of a busy summer for UT Housing. Residents of Hess Hall will be unpacking into renovated student rooms, marking the final piece in a multi-phase renovation of the large hall. The Apartment Residence Hall also got a smaller facelift, with fresh paint and newly waxed apartment floors and a new first-floor multipurpose lounge. The renovated Hess Hall student rooms are also newly furnished, and Gibbs and Humes halls received upgrades to security camera systems. Reese, North Carrick, and South Carrick halls will get the new digital equipment this fall.
The final touches are being put on the new Student Health Center, along Volunteer Boulevard near Fraternity Park. Set to open next semester, it represents a significant expansion of space over the current clinic. It will include the Counseling Center and house programs for a wide range of wellness and student care.
Also this spring, the Min Kao Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Building officially marks its place on the Hill, concluding more than three years of construction. The state-of-the-art facility sits at the corner of Middle Drive and Cumberland Avenue. The 150,000-square-foot, $37.5 million project is funded by the state and alumnus Min Kao, the founder of Garmin Ltd. It will house classrooms, laboratories, and a 2,500-square-foot auditorium. Middle Way Drive, the lower road that loops around the Hill, is closed from Perkins Hall to Cumberland Avenue to accommodate the project.
Demolition also began this month on the old Engineering Annex building below the stadium and next to the G-10 garage. The John Tickle Engineering Building, named for the UT donor and alumnus, will house the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Industrial and Information Engineering.
Just behind the Rock, contractors are hard at work on the Natalie L. Haslam Music Center. This new home for the School of Music and special community asset opens in 2013.
Morgan Hill, the site of the new Sorority Village, is now getting its first set of long-awaited chapter houses. The first houses just beginning construction are Delta Zeta, Alpha Delta Pi, Sigma Kappa, Kappa Delta, Alpha Omicron Pi, Phi Mu, and Alpha Chi Omega. Construction on the Kappa Kappa Gamma and Delta Delta Delta houses will begin soon. The site will eventually feature thirteen houses and a meeting space for Alpha Kappa Alpha.
Members of the Lambda Chi Alpha and Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity houses also will have newly renovated headquarters in about a month. Construction has also started on the Kappa Alpha fraternity house on Caledonia Avenue, northwest of the Presidential residence halls.
Large-scale progress is also being made on the site of what will be soon be the new Student Recreation Fields on Sutherland Avenue, just a couple miles from campus. Demolition of the Sutherland and Golf Range apartment complexes on this forty-acre site began in early August. The goal is to have the first student intramural games played on the fields next fall.
Chamique Holdsclaw Drive will be closed for another year for the addition of the Football Training Facility. It will be a part of the complex that is Brenda Lawson Athletic Center and Neyland-Thompson Sports Center.
Also on that side of campus, the new streetlights have been installed as part of a large-scale beautification project of the Lake Loudoun streetscape. Throughout this and next semester, the primary thoroughfare into campus will get new sidewalks and retaining walls, street medians, and planters and new landscaping.
Across the Joe Johnson Bridge on the agriculture campus, students will find the final stages of construction on the Brehm Animal Sciences and Food Science and Technology buildings, which parallel the commuter lot. Watch for bus stops to change during the spring semester. College of Veterinary Medicine students will notice the beginnings of construction on a new Large Animal Hospital and the final phase of construction on a new greenhouse near the entrance to their commuter lot.