ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 13, 1996 TAG: 9603130043
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
With the General Assembly's final vote Monday on a two-year state budget came a thumbs up for $40 million in new building projects at Virginia Tech and Radford University.
Legislators approved Virginia Tech's flagship $24 million advanced communications building, the research-classroom centerpiece of a campuswide push toward greater use of technology. While $14.45 million will be raised through Tech's ongoing capital campaign, another $10 million will come from a planned $163 million state bond for college and university building projects.
"The idea was to bring together into one space part of our research community that's involved in research in technologies that provide some of the critical infrastructure in this new learning and teaching environment," said Earving Blythe, Tech's vice-president for information systems.
The nearly 100,000-square-foot building - the size of two football fields - will be built across from and connected to Newman Library by a glass-lined skybridge. Besides high-tech classrooms and an electronic library, researchers now scattered off-campus will move together to examine such advanced technologies as wireless communications and fiber optics.
"About a third of the building is going to be research," said Larry Hincker, Tech's spokesman.
Radford's plum from this year's session is a major academic building, also included in the state-financed bond. By 1998, the Waldron College of Nursing and Health Services may be moving into a new $7.5 million headquarters on Adams Street. The 70,000-square-foot building will consolidate programs scattered now across six buildings.
"The Waldron College of Nursing and Health Services, one of Radford's premier programs, is the only such university program in Southwest Virginia," said Radford President Douglas Covington. Its School of Nursing last year boasted a 100 percent passing rate on the state nursing examination, he said.
Funding for the building came as a trade-off against Gov. George Allen's proposal to complete renovations to Walker Hall, the classroom-administration building. "We felt like the priority for the university was to try to get a new academic facility," said Charles King, Radford's vice president for business affairs.
Other campus projects include:
Tech's $6.5 million plan for a new athletic training building, which will be financed through the university's capital campaign. Already, Tech officials say, more than $5 million in pledges has come in. Most of the building's 40,000 square feet will go to gyms specializing in speed-agility work, weightlifting and cardiovascular training. Other rooms include an academic advising area, exhibit hall, nearly a dozen meeting rooms and an auditorium, Hincker said.
Tech also gained approval to spend another $2.3 million on a new coal-fired boiler it has hoped to build since the early '90s. Several years ago, the university gained approval to spend $8.5 million for the boiler, but the cost has since risen, said Spencer Hall, assistant vice president for facilities.
The new boiler, which should be fired up by 1998, will go inside the campus power plant.
"We haven't had a new one since 1972," Hall said. "We've built 2 million square feet since 1972."
Tech's executive vice president, Minnis Ridenour, said the new boiler will be paid for by those who use the extra electricity.
Protests by environmentalists have greeted the project in the past.
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1996by CNB