Once upon a time, the University of Georgia wanted to look serious, modern and flat, like Berlin.
Tall, linear structures and soaring concrete walls went up, signaling a progressive institution where buildings and ideas would dwarf people. But those heady Bauhaus days are gone, and the school’s latest architectural offering, the Special Collections Libraries Building, will look more like some of its first - smaller and more human in size, warmed by brick and fronted by something familiar to lovers of the school’s 18th-century old campus.
“The columns are going up – it’s got big beautiful columns in front,” Deputy University Librarian P. Toby Graham said.
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The latest byproduct of an ongoing campus master plan, the $45 million special collections building is set to open Jan. 2012 in the northwest part of campus, on a plot bounded by Hull Street, Florida Avenue and Waddell Street. The area itself will be reconfigured, with an attractive oval green space planned.
Offering an ever-changing vista and non-stop construction, the school’s turn-back-the-clock master plan has refurbished aging buildings, greened up 45 acres of asphalt since the late 1990s and won admirers the world over with its Georgian-style additions.
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Other changes are in the works:
- Stay tuned for the razing of the Chi Phi house in the next six or seven months to make way for a new graduate school building.
- Renovations are planned for Mary Lyndon and Rutherford halls, along with Myers and Soule halls.
- A deadline of fall 2012 is set for the conversion of the Navy School into a new medical school.
- Russell, Brumby, Creswell and Reed North dorms are being considered for a makeover as new digs for university athletes, who now reside at the school’s East Campus Village.
“We're not keeping up with the Joneses, so to speak. You just can’t bring a sport in and not support it,” said Danny Sniff, UGA’s associate vice president for facilities planning. “We're going to look at renovating our aging housing stock."
As the student population has swelled toward 35,000, UGA has added an astonishing 5 million square feet of space, the biggest size increase in the school’s history, according to Sniff. The campus footprint has expanded some 20 acres. As private sector construction has faltered, the universityl has forged ahead using a mix of public and private funds to get the work done.
More than 1,700 beds have been added on East Campus, Sniff said. The new Lamar Dodd School of Art opened in 2008.
“Green” changes such as the conversion of Herty Drive back to a grassy quadrangle have been a massive success, but Sniff adds that funding for new master-plan projects is trailing off a bit and, "$1.6 billion later, we're still not as far along as I would have liked."
The Lumpkin Street redirection failed due to a lack of town support, and the conversion of D.W. Brooks Drive to green space on South Campus was only partially completed. Also shelved was a proposed trolley system, which would have unclogged a mix of foot, car, bus and bike traffic that is still passing through the middle of campus. “Traffic is something we need to work on,” Sniff said. “It’s been so congested – there’s sometimes a 30-minute wait to leave campus.”
