UT students return to campus this week to the opening of two new academic facilities—the John D. Tickle Engineering Building and the Natalie L. Haslam Music Center.
It’s been sixty-four years since two all-new academic facilities greeted students for a new school year.
“We are so proud to open the Haslam Music Center and the Tickle Engineering Building to our students,” said Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek. “Construction is a wonderful sign of progress and we still have plenty of progress underway.”
The Natalie L. Haslam Music Center has 123,000 square feet of space for instruction, rehearsals, performances, and offices. The $40 million building is the new home of the university’s School of Music.
The John D. Tickle Engineering Building provides a new pedestrian footbridge that improves access to The Hill from Neyland Drive. The 114,000-square-foot, $23.2 million facility houses the departments of civil and environmental engineering and industrial and systems engineering.
Games will be played soon at the new RecSports Complex on Sutherland Avenue west of campus. Intramural teams begin organizing at the start of the semester, with games to begin soon thereafter. A special ribbon cutting will mark the complex opening on August 30.
Along with these large milestones, several large-scale building and road projects will continue through the academic year:
- The largest single project—the new Student Union—is on schedule with the first phase set to finish in 2015. Students will soon enjoy a new book and technology store, dining facilities, and additional programming and office space. On the east side of the construction site, Phillip Fulmer Way from Cumberland Avenue to Middle Drive will continue to be one lane southbound until completion of the first phase.
- Construction continues on the Fred D. Brown Residence Hall, the university’s first new residence hall in more than forty years, which will house 700 men and women when it opens in fall 2014. One lane of Andy Holt Avenue at Melrose Place is closed until construction is complete.
- Ten houses in Sorority Village are now occupied and an eleventh house will be occupied during the fall semester. Two additional houses are still under construction. The Sorority Village Center administrative building also is open. Located atop Morgan Hill on the west side of campus, the area provides housing and meeting space for many of the university’s sororities.
- Renovations to the old student health building, now known as Temple Hall, will be completed in the next few months. Temple Hall will house teaching, research, and office space for the College of Nursing.
- The Lake Loudoun streetscape project is also set to wrap up by early fall. New sidewalks, brick retaining walls, and new landscaping on both sides of the street will welcome visitors to campus from Neyland Drive and the nearby Tennessee River.
- Most parking spots around the Andy Holt Tower will be reopened as part of the repair of the building’s brick façade. The repair work will halt for the fall semester, and then resume in December.
For more information on campus traffic and construction, visit the Cone Zone.
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CONTACT:
Charles Primm (865-974-5180, primmc@utk.edu)