The University recently approved a new site for the center across the street from the new School of Public Health building. The site includes five Emory-owned parcels bounded by Clifton and North Gatewood roads, as well as the Wachovia Bank property on Houston Mill Road. Three adjacent parcels fronting on Gatewood Road, including the Emory Autism Center, are not included in the project.
The $6.5-million, 23,000-square-foot facility will face Clifton Road and be located between the Clifton Tower residence hall and the Horizons Building owned by Egleston Children's Hospital. Hillel and the Testing and Evaluation Center, which will be moved to other campus locations, are currently located on those two parcels. An additional 40,000 square feet of shell space also will be constructed to allow future expansion of the center's programs.
Also included in the project are three parcels fronting on North Gatewood Road across the street from Harwood Condominiums. Two of the houses are vacant, and one is used to house about a dozen nursing students. Marcus Vess, Seretean Center project manager in Campus Planning and Construction, said the University is considering a plan to build a 500-space parking structure on that portion of the property. Vess said that to "minimize the height of the facade facing the Harwood Condo-miniums," preliminary plans call for a four- or five-story deck with three levels above ground at the North Gatewood street level. The cost of the deck is expected to be just over $4 million.
The Seretean Center, which is in the conceptual design phase, will house a number of health- and wellness-related programs of the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory Hospital and The Emory Clinic. Current plans call for a fitness center with exercise equipment, an aerobics room, indoor track, and locker rooms and showers. Educational facilities such as classrooms, conference rooms and a demonstration kitchen also will be included. Occupants from other health-oriented divisions may be included in the center in the future.
Vess said that businessman Budd Seretean, whose gift made the project possible, has recently made an additional gift for a 100-seat auditorium.
"The relocation of the Seretean Center site will dramatically improve pedestrian access to the center from the campus," said Vess, referring to the center's original site, a heavily wooded area on Gatewood Road between Harwood Condomin-iums and the Yerkes Primate Research Center. That site was abandoned last fall after protests from various Emory community members. The site was designated in a 1986 report known as the Murdy-Carter report as "mature hardwood forests" which "should not be seriously altered without an environmental assessment and the development of an ecologically sound land-use plan."
--Dan Treadaway