School of Business to build new home

Within the next five years, VCU’s School of Business could have a new home. A planning committee is examining the preliminary aspects of a new building, such as location, size and funding.

“It is a challenge, but it is exciting,” said Edwin Blanks, vice provost for academic administration.

E.G. Miller, the business school’s senior associate dean and planning committee member, said a major concept for the building calls for a vast amount of community spaces. Having multiple common areas in the new building, he said, ranks high on the list because so much of the business curriculum involves collaboration.

“What excites us is this opportunity to have community spaces so you get a sense of community among the students and faculty,” Miller said. “We are constrained in our own building. In the building we are in now, there are no gathering places. Now, many students have to sit on the floors because there is really nowhere for them to congregate. We would expect to see more spaces like that-collaborative spaces for students in a big building so they can get together and work on projects and presentations.”

No designs have been drafted to date, but Miller said the planning committee is completing contracts with an architectural firm. Although he could not identify the firm because of the nature of the contracts, the senior dean said it has a long history of successful projects.

The new facility would be modeled after other business schools the committee visited including one in Baltimore. Classrooms would be modeled after the 60-seat, horseshoe-configured, tiered one on the second floor of the Eugene P. and Lois E. Trani Center for Life Sciences.

“They feel very small,” Miller said, “but it is very easy to teach in there and feel connected with the students because of the way the rooms are designed. Those are the kinds of rooms we need to increase class size from 48 to 60.”

Roderick McDavis, provost and vice president for academic affairs, sees only good things for the business school once the facility becomes operational.

“We believe that a state-of-the art facility not only will allow us to have larger classes and do some of the other types of things that we want to do,” he said, “but it will demonstrate not only to the Richmond community but to future students that VCU is very serious about its School of Business.”

Henry Rhone, vice provost for student affairs and enrollment services, views a new business school building as a way for VCU to compete with other business schools. Blanks concurs with Rhone’s assessment, saying a new building would help attract prospective business students.

“When a (basketball) player looks at two or three top prospects to go play basketball for,” Blanks said, “they look at the weight room (and) they look at the facility. It is the same with business students. They want to see where they are going to be educated.”

Marketing major Ryan Semonich, 19, also agrees a new building would help increase enrollment at the business school.

“A new building will get a lot more business students to come to VCU,” Semonich said.

Miller said the committee is looking for student input throughout the next year regarding construction of the new building.

“We have asked the leadership of our students organizations to recommend students that will work with us during the spring, summer and fall with the planning of (the new building),” he said.

Even though the committee has not chosen the construction site, Miller said the VV parking lot on Floyd Avenue tops the list.

“There are some other sites that are being looked at but none to the level that one (VV) has been discussed,” Miller said, adding that tenants in some of the buildings surrounding the lot would need to relocate.

“The buildings there will have to be taken out,” he said.

If the VV parking lot were chosen, the reconstructed area could stretch from Linden to Harrison streets and from Floyd Avenue to the alley on the lot, and if tenants were forced to relocate, McDavis said VCU would want them to stay within close proximity to the campus.

“I think we certainly would talk with the current occupants of the buildings,” he said.

The university owns some buildings on the proposed lot including the Meeting Center, the Education Annex and the Academic Success Center, but the Baptist Student Union is privately owned.

“I think a fair price will be given,” Rhone said. “I don’t think they (BSU) will be opposed to relocating.”

Though Miller could offer only a ballpark figure, he said the new facility could cost $25 million to $30 million. Blanks put the figure in perspective, saying the new life sciences building cost about $30 million. The current business building, he said, cost only $5 million when it was constructed in 1972.