Design team picked for quad renovation

For the past year or so, debates have been flying around about what UNCG should do about the seven dorms that make up the Quad. In April, Chancellor Brady held an open forum for students, alumni and faculty to come and talk about the future of Bailey, Coit, Cotten, Gray, Hinshaw, Jamison and Shaw residence halls, all built in 1919. The major issue at hand was whether the Quad should be renovated or demolished completely to make way for seven brand new residence halls.

Just a few days later, about 50 protestors, made up of students, faculty and preservationists, held a protest in order to sway the decision of the Board of Trustees to rebuild the halls. In September, the Board of Trustees finally reached a decision, announcing that the Quad would indeed be renovated, rather than rebuilt. The project is estimated to cost almost $53 million and will begin production in May 2011. This past Thursday, the Board of Trustees chose the design team consisting of Woolpert, and Hanbury Evans Wright Vlaattas, to plan and construct the design for the newly renovated dorm halls.

The Quad at UNCG is not the first to be redesigned by the members of the team; they recently completed a renovation of the historic Quad area at Clemson University in South Carolina. Over the past eight years, they have also won 17 national and international housing design awards. In addition to members from these groups, graduate students in the Interior Architecture program will help with the design, along with members of the housing staff and a team of university facilities design and construction staff. Planning is expected to begin this winter.

As the residence halls are nearly 90 years old, fire sprinklers, handicapped access and air conditioning are lacking in about 95 percent of each of the residence halls. These will all be added to the newly updated dormitories. Another new interior feature of the halls will be the actual style and layout of the rooms themselves. Presently, the Quad has a double bedroom design, but after the renovation it will boast suite-style rooms with adjoining baths. Included in the plans are additional spaces for more of UNCG's learning communities.

In order to ease the loss of bed space, a new residence hall is in preparation to be built by Tower Village on Spring Garden Street. This residence will include nearly 400 rooms, cost $30 million, and is slated to open in August 2011. Site work will begin in the upcoming spring semester. The companies chosen to construct this residence hall are Pearce Brinkley Cease and Lee and Ayers/Saints/Gross. Many are optimistic that the renovation of the Quad will help to preserve the history of UNCG's campus for future Spartan generations to come.