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May
6, 2005
Johnson & Wales plans new uptown
building
DOUG SMITH
Johnson & Wales
University
is ready to add another classroom building to its
West Trade Street
campus to keep pace with growing enrollment.
Charlotte
campus President Art Gallagher said construction is to start this winter
on a four-story, 60,000-square-foot structure to open by September 2007.
This year's 1,100-student body
will nearly double next year to about 2,000 and exceed 3,000 over the next
couple of years, he said.
The new College of Business
Building will provide classroom space for business and hospitality
students as well as courses in arts and sciences.
Gallagher said it also will have
about 50 faculty offices, student activity and recreation space and
street-level retail with shops of special interest to university students
as well as the general public.
Johnson & Wales paid Bank of
America about $2 million late last year for the site -- nearly 2 acres of
cleared land between West Trade and West Fourth streets.
The property is bounded by
Mount
Moriah
Primitive
Baptist
Church
at 747 W. Trade and the
Norfolk
Southern railroad tracks.
The new building -- which will be
about a block east of Johnson & Wales' five-story academic center at
Trade and Cedar streets -- is in a strategic location for the university
and the public.
It's across the railroad tracks
from where the Charlotte Area Transit System and the state plan a station
for trains and buses.
The state has spent $30 million to
buy 27 acres around the future station, which may be built later this
decade on land occupied by the Greyhound bus depot.
The station will replace the small
Amtrak station on
North Tryon Street
with a complex of perhaps three buildings that will serve high-speed
Amtrak trains from
New York
, commuter trains from Mooresville, plus CATS and Greyhound buses.
Gallagher said Spectrum Properties
Inc., which will develop the university's new building, is representing it
in meetings to coordinate plans with CATS and the state.
Spectrum also is developing
City
View
Towers
, a Johnson & Wales student apartment complex at Fifth and Pine
streets that will open ahead of schedule this summer with 550 beds for
returning students.
Plans are being developed for the
new building, and Gallagher said no costs estimates are available.
He's using the same team that
designed and built the 145,000-square-foot academic center: architect LS3P
Associates Ltd. and general contractor RodgersDooley.
The 91-year-old university, whose
main campus is in
Providence
,
R.I.
, is known for producing top-notch chefs.
It opened the $112 million
Charlotte campus last fall, combining the academic center and student
residence halls with offices and storefronts in nearby Gateway Village and
Gateway Center.
The university also owns the
DoubleTree Hotel in the
Gateway
Center
complex.
Gallagher is proud of the
university's culinary reputation, but he's quick to note that it also
offers degrees in such subjects as accounting, business administration and
hospitality management.
Only about 50 percent of its
Charlotte
students are in the culinary arts college, he said.
Gallagher said the College of
Business Building was in the planning stage and wasn't affected by a
tentative agreement that would have given Johnson & Wales the state's
James K. Polk building at Trade and Graham streets for $1.
Gov. Mike Easley opposed the deal,
which would have completed a promised $10 million incentive package that
helped lure the university to
Charlotte
.
The Council of State subsequently
approved the sale of the building about a month ago to a
Charlotte
investor.
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