South Lawn project ‘right on track’

Brian McNeill / Charlottesville Daily Progress
Published: September 29, 2007

Slated for completion in 2010, the $105 million first phase of the South Lawn project will add more than 112,000 square feet of classrooms and office space to the university's College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

"We have no space. We have no place to go. We have no growth capacity," said Adam R. Daniel, senior associate dean and chief operating officer of the College. "When the South Lawn project is finished, it'll be a big step toward addressing that shortage of space."

With construction well under way, UVa officials say the South Lawn project is on schedule and on budget.

As of July 10, $60.1 million of the project's $61.2 private financing goal had been raised. The state government has allocated $17.5 million and the university has set aside the project's remaining $26.3 million.

"We're right on track," said David Neuman, UVa architect.

The project's first phase will be made up of three interconnected buildings, in a horseshoe layout, and a 100-foot-wide elevated extension of the Lawn across Jefferson Park Avenue. At the end of the extension of the grassy Lawn, a circular plaza will surround a labyrinth sculpture.

Two of the buildings will be home to UVa's departments of history, politics and religious studies, while the third will house a 250-seat lecture hall, a coffee shop, clusters of computers and a glass-enclosed conservatory. Upon completion, UVa officials estimate 12,000 students will visit the buildings each day.

With the addition of the South Lawn project's 142 faculty offices, the College of Arts & Sciences will be free to hire new professors, lowering its student-faculty ratio and expanding course offerings in the university's largest and most popular school. The college has 18 students for every faculty member, but is seeking to lower that ratio by hiring 10 new professors each year for the next 10 years.

"We have positions to fill, but no place to put them," Neuman said. "More than anything, the South Lawn project is meant to accommodate the growth in students and the growth in faculty that goes along with it."

Under state mandate, UVa is required to admit 100 more undergraduate and 50 more graduate students each year. Additional faculty hires and office space have not kept pace with the incremental increases in the student body, Neuman said.

It's been a while

The last time UVa undertook a major construction project in the area of Thomas Jefferson's Academical Village was in 1898, when Cabell Hall was built following the 1895 fire that destroyed the Rotunda annex.

Jefferson originally intended the Lawn to be open on one end, giving students a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. As part of the South Lawn project, the extension of the Lawn will open up the Academical Village to Jefferson's intended view of the mountains. At the terminus of the Lawn extension, an as-yet-undecided quote from Jefferson might be engraved on the edge of the terrace to inspire students as they look out over the Blue Ridge.

"Jefferson meant for the Lawn to inspire people to go out and explore," Neuman said. "This will restore that original view."

The South Lawn project's designers echo Jefferson's style of architecture, while giving it a modern sensibility as well.

"It explores the range of Jeffersonian architecture," said John Ruble, the project's lead designer and a 1969 UVa graduate. "All of it plays into the feeling that being at UVa is different from anywhere else. It will be something that the students will remember when they look back at their time at UVa."

The project's bisected extension of the original Lawn will also reinforce Jefferson's concept of having a place for informal social interactions between faculty and students. The project includes numerous indoor and outdoor benches and meeting spaces, as well as the café inside the conservatory.

"It's kind of thinking about the educational experience beyond just faculty offices and classrooms," Daniel said. "There's a whole other dimension - what happens outside the classroom. By that I mean peer-to-peer interactions, accidental encounters between professors and students, and informal discussions."

The Lawn extension eventually may host baccalaureate ceremonies for the departments headquartered at the South Lawn buildings, Neuman added.

Green design

For the first time in UVa's history, the university is seeking a Leadership in Engineering and Environmental Design designation with the South Lawn project, recognizing its environmentally friendly design. It will feature green roofs, storage for 100 bicycles, indoor showers for bike-riders, construction materials with low-volatile organic compounds, maximum open space, energy efficiency and more.

It will also feature 3.9 acres of gardens, including water retention gardens that will filter water as it flows downhill to a semi-wetland behind the project's site. Environmental studies students will help maintain its bio-filtration system.

"We kept going back to Jefferson's words that the Central Grounds were selected as a site because of the groves and the streams," said Cheryl Barton, one of the project's two landscape architects. "So we incorporated a lot of water."

Another garden, accessible through the glass-enclosed observatory, will be modeled after the lush gardens of the Pavilions on the Lawn.

The project will also be home to a memorial to Catherine "Kitty" Foster, a free black laundress who lived at the site in the mid-1800s. The memorial will feature a lightweight metal "shadow catcher" that will evoke the original frame of her house. When light catches the structure, it will form a shadow of what the house once looked like. Plus, an excavated hole of Foster's laundry room will be visible through a glass pane.

Nearby, a low stone wall will be built around a cemetery of 32 historic graves. The cemetery is believed to have belonged to a community of free black people.

"We recommended that it become a park-like area and an outdoor classroom as well," Barton said.

Phase II less certain

Though the first phase of the South Lawn project appears to be on target, the future of the project's second phase is less certain. Phase II, which involves the three-year renovation of New Cabell Hall, is scheduled for completion by the summer of 2012. The project will involve replacing the 55-year-old building's mechanical and electrical fixtures, including its noisy and inefficient window-mounted air conditioning units. Original plans called for the demolition of New Cabell Hall, but UVa determined it could save $40 million by renovating it instead of razing it.

The project's second phase has an estimated price tag of $80 million. Neuman said UVa expects the state to finance the project in its entirety. No funds have been earmarked, though UVa hopes its request will be filled in the General Assembly's session early next year.

Del. Vincent Callahan, the outgoing chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said he was not familiar with the South Lawn project and doubted it would be financed out of the state's general fund.

"I don't think there's a lot of extra money lying around for capital outlay projects," said Callahan, a Fairfax County Republican who is not seeking re-election in November after 40 years in office. "I would suspect that the governor might be proposing a new higher education bond package."

Jeff Tiller, a spokesman for Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's office, said the governor has not decided if he will support a new statewide bond referendum for higher education facilities.

"It's been proposed by several higher education institutions, but the governor hasn't made any decisions yet."

In 2002, the last time a higher education facilities bond referendum went before Virginia voters, the package was approved with 73 percent of the vote. That package secured $900.5 million for construction projects at colleges around Virginia.

The second phase of the South Lawn project is UVa's third priority for obtaining state construction funds, Neuman said.

The No. 1 priority is an information technology building for the engineering department and the second priority is the refurbishment of the Curry School of Education's Ruffner Hall.