The Observer, March 9, 2007
Volume XXXIX, Issue 20
Campus center plans underway
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After 15 years of promises of a new student center, the administration is finally sitting down to make it happen.
A new $40 million campus center is currently in the planning stages, with groundbreaking expected to occur in fall of 2008 and completion expected by spring of 2011.
"We're putting ideas together, and we should be ready for architect selection by the end of this semester," said Myles Nickolich, VP of Student Affairs for USG and a member of the Campus Center Planning Team.
The building will be located somewhere in the vicinity of KSL and Thwing, likely in the area that contains the sidewalks from both Mather Quad and the Turning Point statue.
"It will be right in the way of the path to class," said Nickolich. "The idea is that students will have to walk through it."
"We hope that students will want to walk through it," said Don Kamalsky, an associate vice president of Student Affairs.
The location of the building at the exact center of campus will have a symbolic meaning for Case.
"We're placing it at a crossroads to show that it belongs to everyone," said Margaret Carney, University Architect and Planner. "It isn't just for the engineers or the liberal arts students."
Nickolich's commitee recently traveled to visit the student centers of the University of Akron and Kent State University, and has plans to visit colleges in Virginia in the coming weeks.
The committee is looking to balance a trendy student center like Akron's with a wealth of technology.
"We're going all out with this," said Nickolich. "We want it to be the pinnacle of technology."
The new building is being called a campus center rather than a student center to reflect its place in the University Circle community. It will later not only to students, but faculty, staff, and visiting scholars as well as University Circle residents.
"Part of why students are attracted to Case is its affiliation with University Hospitals, CIM, CIA, and other cultural institutions," said Sue Nickel-Schindewolf, an associate vice president for Student Affairs. "Here students are more likely to run into people who are not their professors."
The campus center will take up about 75,000 square feet and be about the size of two floors of KSL. The committee hopes to incorporate campus offices like the Career Center, bursar's office, and registrar's office into the plan as well as provide classrooms, meeting areas, and an auditorium to be larger than any in the University Circle area.
"We're putting in everything short of a holodeck," said Nickolich.
Flexibility will be a large part of the campus center's layout; rooms that are classrooms during the day will be able to be used by student groups at night, and everything will be easy to renovate.
"Ten years down the line, we won't be stuck with the original plan," said Nickolich.
A big challenge faced by the committee is to build a great campus center without encroaching on the burgeoning Arts and Retail District that is being built right down the street.
The Arts and Retail District will include the relocated Museum of Contemporary Art as well as an abundance of retail stores, food, and places to live. The university bookstore will also be located here at the corner of Ford and Euclid in the form of a two-story Barnes and Noble.
"We're trying to bring the flair of Coventry to a college town area here," said Nickolich.
To that end, the new campus center will not impinge upon the Arts and Retail District's business, but will include such things as a Case Club-like restaurant where students can have lunch with faculty or administrators or just go on a nice date, according to Nickolich.
The campus center will not just be a standalone building, according to Carney.
"It will be a group of three buildings and outdoor spaces. It will engage with the library and Thwing to be a center for the whole campus," he said.
