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Official Wake Campus Development Thread

The new "Near Term Space Planning Project" is completely different from the 2019 "Campus Master Plan Update," which contained almost no features of the current plan.

The 2019 plan suggested the construction of at least one and maybe more new classroom buildings in the few open plots of land still available on the main campus. These images from the 2019 plan show the possible locations.

There was talk that Hatch would try to raise the money to pay for the proposed "Academic Commons" building on Davis Field, but that didn't happen. Now most of the ideas in the 2019 plan have been tossed aside in favor of the new plan. If Wente leaves for greener pastures, then maybe there'll be yet another plan in a couple years.

It has been a long time since Wake constructed any new building besides dorms, athletic facilities and business school buildings.

Master plan.jpg

Davis field.jpg

West campus.jpg

The image belows shows the current view of campus with a view of the campus including proposed new buildings

Buildings.jpg
 
Liquid Karma said:
Is it too hard to walk to Benson for freshman? What am I missing?
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I thought people were saying that benson was needed for academic use. So if you are going to build a new student center, it makes sense to build it near the people who will use it the most.
 
BeachBumDeac said:
I thought people were saying that benson was needed for academic use. So if you are going to build a new student center, it makes sense to build it near the people who will use it the most.
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Are they going to do a large scale renovation of Benson? It seems to me that the layout of the building isn’t very conducive for academic use.
 
Liquid Karma said:
Is it too hard to walk to Benson for freshman? What am I missing?
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What you are missing: Wake is desperately short of modern classroom space. It doesn't have the money and can't raise it to build a nice new classroom building.

So the administration has decided to retrofit Benson as a classroom/faculty office building. It's not an ideal solution but it will probably cost significantly less than building a new classroom and it can be done more quickly than building a new building.

After Benson is repurposed, Wake will need a new student center, which needs to be in the center of campus. So Tribble will be torn down and a new student center will take its place. The timing (and certainty) of these projects remains unclear. It looks like building a new office building on Baity St. will be the top priority. Wake has some of the money for that thanks to $35M from the state of NC.
 
With all the campus expansion Tribble is certainly not the center of campus.
 
IamThunderbolt said:
Are they going to do a large scale renovation of Benson? It seems to me that the layout of the building isn’t very conducive for academic use.
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Yes, according to the current plan, it will be converted into classrooms, faculty offices and maybe some study space. It will be interesting to see how that happens, because the building was not designed as flexible space.
 
Anybody know what the renovation of Benson and demolition/rebuild of Tribble will accomplish? Sounds like two buildings each designed for a purpose will have their purposes swapped.

Benson Student center to be renovated to Benson classroom and professor offices building.

Tribble classroom and professor offices building to be demolished and rebuilt as "Tribble" Student Center.

What am I missing?
 
CaptRenault said:
Yes, according to the current plan, it will be converted into classrooms, faculty offices and maybe some study space. It will be interesting to see how that happens, because the building was not designed as flexible space.
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I’m trying to remember how many rooms in Benson are big enough to be converted to classrooms. I assume the food court will turn into several classrooms. But having a food court in a classroom building is pretty efficient.
 
CaptRenault said:
What you are missing: Wake is desperately short of modern classroom space. It doesn't have the money and can't raise it to build a nice new classroom building.

So the administration has decided to retrofit Benson as a classroom/faculty office building. It's not an ideal solution but it will probably cost significantly less than building a new classroom and it can be done more quickly than building a new building.

After Benson is repurposed, Wake will need a new student center, which needs to be in the center of campus. So Tribble will be torn down and a new student center will take its place. The timing (and certainty) of these projects remains unclear. It looks like building a new office building on Baity St. will be the top priority. Wake has some of the money for that thanks to $35M from the state of NC.
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How are they desperately short of classroom space when you consider the downtown classrooms?

And Tribble is not the center of campus.
 
Liquid Karma said:
How are they desperately short of classroom space when you consider the downtown classrooms?

And Tribble is not the center of campus.
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Wake Downtown/Innovation Quarter has been the focus of academic expansion. Lots of new academic space there, but very few students.

Tribble is one of the older buildings, part of the original 14 buildings on campus. So it is logical that it needs renovation. However, it is odd to plan a complete tear down and rebuild, unless it has problems that have not been made public. Space for a classroom or professor's office shouldn't be that different in 2025 from what it was in 1955.
 
Deaconblue said:
Wake Downtown/Innovation Quarter has been the focus of academic expansion. Lots of new academic space there, but very few students.

Tribble is one of the older buildings, part of the original 14 buildings on campus. So it is logical that it needs renovation. However, it is odd to plan a complete tear down and rebuild, unless it has problems that have not been made public. Space for a classroom or professor's office shouldn't be that different in 2025 from what it was in 1955.
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Aside from more classroom and office space to accommodate more students and for updated technology.
 
PhDeac said:
Aside from more classroom and office space to accommodate more students and for updated technology.
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Updated technology should not require knocking down the whole building, unless they plan to build back taller (more stories.) Strip it to the floors/ceilings/wall studs. Put in technology stuff. Refinish.
 
Deaconblue said:
Updated technology should not require knocking down the whole building, unless they plan to build back taller (more stories.) Strip it to the floors/ceilings/wall studs. Put in technology stuff. Refinish.
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Look at a classroom in Farrell Hall (below), home of the b-school-those are the classrooms that meet the modern standard.

Even though the 2019 plan stated that Tribble would be renovated and updated, there is no way to make it meet the standard set by Farrell Hall classrooms. It also doesn't meet current fire codes and accessibility standards.

More importantly, you can't take Tribble offline for a year or more to renovate it without having equivalent classroom space ready to accommodate the classes that would normally meet in Tribble. So you either have to build a new classroom building first on a site like Davis Field (that was the original plan) or you have to renovate an existing non-classroom building to transform it into a classroom building--that is the current plan, i.e., repurpose Benson.

Once Benson has been surgically and magically transformed and assumed its true identify as a classroom building, then you can tear down Tribble and build a new student center.

Why not build a new classroom building first and then renovate Tribble? Because those alumni who are rich enough and willing to donate the funds necessary for a new building (probably about $75M) are tapped out-in recent years they gave over $200M for sports facilities and they don't really care about academic buildings. Rich alumni won't even give money to put their names on dorms these days--ever notice that all the newest dorms have generic names? That's because they were funded with debt or internal WF funds.

Wake-Forest-Farrell-Hall8.jpg
 
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