College heads to Law Center for more space
An exodus from the Carolina Coliseum is brewing, but it’s still a few years out.
The College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management (HRSM) plans to move out of the building’s classroom level in about six years, once USC’s School of Law has moved into its new building and the Law Center has been renovated, according to Brian Mihalik, the college’s dean.
The college’s enrollment has grown by 55 percent over the last decade, Mihalik said, and between 8 and 9 percent per year. While it’s got enough classroom space, it’s growing its faculty to accommodate the new students, and that means office space is growing scarce.
They’ve converted two 600-square-foot classrooms into offices and moved student services to the basement level to free up others, but by next year, Mihalik said, they’ll all be filled up.
Plus, he said, the offices they have aren’t too attractive, and most lack windows.
That, Mihalik said, makes bringing in top-tier faculty a challenge.
“When you’re in a competitive bidding war with other universities and you show them a windowless office ... faculty initially said, ‘No, thank you. I’m not coming,’” Mihalik said.
The same goes for students.
The college has moved its recruitment office to the McCutchen House on the Horseshoe, and now, when staff take prospective students for a tour of campus, they don’t drop by the Coliseum.
In the meantime, they’ve made some changes — like cutting 11 windows into the walls — but Mihalik said they weren’t enough.
Instead, they’re focused on the Law Center, which will be renovated, “bringing it up to code,” taking out some concrete and adding more glass to its exterior, Mihalik said.
It’ll put the college, USC’s third-largest, in the heart of campus, too. University planners expect about 9,000 students to pass by the Law Center every day on their way to the new Moore School of Business building once it’s open, Mihalik said.
The move adds to an exodus, of sorts, from the Coliseum, as the School of Journalism and Mass Communications is also gearing up to get out.
That school had also outgrown its space, said Charles Bierbauer, the dean of the College of Mass Communications and Information Science.
It’ll move to the Health Sciences Building in the coming years, allowing the school to add facilities like a $1.5 million, 1,420-square-foot TV studio. Those weren’t possible before because the Coliseum isn’t a particularly flexible space, Bierbauer said. Construction will begin in January 2014, said Provost Michael Amiridis.
“It’s a clunky building,” Bierbauer said. “An inelegant quote for an inelegant building.”
The plans raise the question of what USC’s administrators will do with the space, including an arena that has been almost entirely replaced by the Colonial Life Arena.
For now, its future is unclear, university spokesman Wes Hickman said, and USC’s open to “creative and unique” ideas since it’s unlikely to be demolished.
But as far as Amiridis is concerned, one thing is certain: He doesn’t want it to hold classrooms again.
Instead, he’d like to see it converted into a second student union to supplement the cramped Russell House, one better suited to the campus’s westward expansion.
It stands across Assembly Street, next to the new business school and near where a proposed public-private partnership will build a new housing complex in coming years. Such a union was included in a master plan drawn up by Sasaki Associates, a Massachusetts-based architecture company, Amiridis said.
That plan would gut the building’s concrete walls and replace them with glass, combine the classroom space and the arena and build a tall, multilevel atrium.
There, Amiridis said, the university could add space for student services and restaurants in a sleek new building.
But there’s a catch, Amiridis said: It would cost $100 million.
Plus, the project isn’t well-suited for construction in stages, Amiridis said, so USC will have to hit a high fundraising mark before it can break ground.
So for now, it’s focusing on one goal, he said: “Get them out of there.”
That’ll take some time, too, but a timeline is starting to emerge out of once-nebulous plans, he said.
“We’re talking about four to five years from now, but at least it’s visible,” Amiridis said.