Although construction traffic in the area near the business school site undoubtedly will cause some inconvenience, project manager Ken Crellen said no road closings are scheduled in connection with the business school project. Crellen said underground utility lines for the future building were installed in the Fishburne parking deck area while work on the Shuttle Parkway was being done.
Crellen said the small faculty/staff parking lot on the site was scheduled to close permanently last week to allow digging for the building's foundation to begin the week of Dec. 11. Placement of heavy equipment and completion of erosion control procedures were scheduled the week after Thanksgiving.
Located on Clifton Road across from the law school, the new five-story, 110,000-square-foot business school will house faculty office and support space on the two upper floors, a 200-seat auditorium on the first floor, four classrooms each on the second and third floors, and an additional classroom in the Executive Education area on the second floor. Each of the classrooms will seat approximately 65 students.
The building's street-level entrance, Crellen said, will be on the second floor. While most of the first floor will be below grade, one side of the floor will face onto a courtyard similar to an existing courtyard near the Glenn Church School Building.
Scheduled for completion in late spring or early summer of 1997, the business school building was designed by Kallmann, McKinnell and Wood Architects of Boston. The general contractor is Holder Construction, the firm that served as general contractor for The Carter Center's Ivan Allen III Pavilion. In fact, Crellen said, the same Holder project team that worked on The Carter Center Pavilion has been assigned to the business school. The entire project budget is $25 million, approximately $18 million of which are construction costs.
Clearing and grading of the site, located across the street from the School of Public Health, began last month. Project manager Marcus Vess said the five-story, 75,000-square-foot building fronting on Clifton Road will be linked to a five-story, 400-space parking deck accessible from North Gatewood Road across from Harwood Condominiums.
Vess said the second, third and fourth floors will be used by the Emory Clinic for primary care functions and activities. The M.B. Seretean Center for Health Education and Promotion will be located on the first floor, operating under the auspices of the School of Public Health. The center will include a 100-seat auditorium, offices and a demonstration kitchen for nutrition education activities. The fifth floor will house a fitness center that will be available for faculty and staff of Emory as well as those of nearby institutions such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Cancer Society, Vess said. Emory Hospital will operate the fitness center.
"I see this building continuing the imagery of traditional Emory," Vess said. "Although it will have contemporary detailing, its red tile roof and other features will blend into the traditional architectural image of the campus."
Vess said that while no construction-related road closings are planned between now and the building's completion next fall, he reminds faculty and staff that construction traffic almost certainly will lead to increased congestion in the Houston Mill/Gatewood area.
Sizemore Floyd Architects, in association with Rabun, Hogan, Ota and Rasche Architects, designed the building. Beers Construction is the general contractor for the $17.5-million project.
--Dan Treadaway