Turner Street project to house university offices, support parking needs for Center for the Arts
A new building taking shape on Turner Street will provide essential parking support for the new Center for the Arts and will allow Virginia Tech to increase efficiencies through space and funding consolidations while providing streamlined services.
The nearly $60 million project, through an agreement between Virginia Tech and the Virginia Tech Foundation, in association with Bob Pack, a local developer, will include an 800-space parking garage and 141,000 gross square foot mixed-use office/retail building space.
Several university departments will relocate to the facility when it is completed in early 2013, including the Controller’s Office, Human Resources, Internal Audit, Purchasing, Capital Assets and Financial Management, Diversity and Inclusion, and Sponsored Programs. The emptied Southgate Center will allow the university to provide new space for a public safety building and additional surge space for displaced academic programs during renovations.
“The movement of these departments will allow Virginia Tech to consolidate lease payments while simultaneously providing a more central location to meet their service needs,” said Sherwood Wilson, Virginia Tech’s vice president for administrative services.
Key leaders in the project development, Chief Executive Officer and Secretary-Treasurer for the Virginia Tech Foundation Raymond J. Smoot Jr. and Virginia Tech’s Vice President of Finance Dwight Shelton, say they agree that the plan truly became complete when the additional service impact to the university was realized.
The first floor will be leased for retail and restaurant space. The university will lease the remaining floors – floors two through four - from the Virginia Tech Foundation. The parking garage, which the university will also lease from the foundation, will provide parking for the building tenants and visitors, university faculty, staff, and students, and visitors to the new Center for the Arts.
Holder Construction, also the contractor for the Center for the Arts, is the primary contractor on the project. Substantial completion of the project is expected for December 2012 with occupants moving in as early as January 2013 – six months ahead of schedule.
The building design, by local architect Thomas Koontz, will blend elements to complement existing town and campus buildings.
Dedicated to its motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), Virginia Tech takes a hands-on, engaging approach to education, preparing scholars to be leaders in their fields and communities. As the commonwealth’s most comprehensive university and its leading research institution, Virginia Tech offers 240 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to more than 31,000 students and manages a research portfolio of $513 million. The university fulfills its land-grant mission of transforming knowledge to practice through technological leadership and by fueling economic growth and job creation locally, regionally, and across Virginia.
