FAYETTEVILLE — With verbal commitments from potential donors, the University of Arkansas is moving forward with plans to convert its historic Men’s Gymnasium building into a music venue.
Officials at the Fayetteville campus are soliciting responses from qualified architects to design what would be called the Concert Hall at the Field House.
UA Chancellor G. David Gearhart said the university has received positiveresponses from potential donors for the $17 million auditorium.
“We are feeling pretty good about the potential for a lead gift,” Gearhart said. “It hasn’t been solidified yet. But we are working quietly.”
A large gift that would bring naming rights to the building, he said.
The university is also considering bids on another decades-old building: John A. White Jr. Engineering Hall, built in 1927 and planned for a complete renovation and addition that will occur inphases.
W. Dale Warren, director of concert bands at UA, could not contain his enthusiasm for the concert hall.
“I don’t have even descriptors for how elated, excited and ecstatic I am,” said Warren, a professor of music. “I’m doing cartwheels. For us, it is going to be an acoustical environment that hopefully will be world-class and we’ll be able to have a stage where we can put our large ensembles on.”
“It’s something we’ve nev-er had,” he said.
The goal is to seek approval for a design firm at the UA System board of trustees’ meeting scheduled Sept. 7-8 in Little Rock, said Mike Johnson, the campus’ associate vice chancellor for facilities.
The university hopes to start construction on the concert hall in September 2013 with completion scheduled for January 2015 at the earliest, Johnson said.
In addition to private fundraising for the project, Gearhart has requested $1 million from the Fayetteville Advertising and Promotion Commission.
The money, to be paid over three years, would offset construction costs, Gearhart said. The commission is scheduled to hear Gearhart’s request at its regular meeting at 2 p.m. Monday.
The concert hall could result in visitor spending of at least $298,000 and potentially $1.9 million annually in Fayetteville, according to estimates from UA’s Center for Business and Economic Research.
“It will be an economic benefit to the city,” Gearhart said. “What we’re asking for is an investment. Like all of our facilities, it will serve the people of Fayetteville and Northwest Arkansas.”
The Concert Hall at the Field House could seat up to 700 people, according to UA.In contrast, its current venue, Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall, has a seating capacity of 238. It opened along with the campus’ Fine Arts Building in 1961.
University musical groups that would perform in the new hall include the university’s symphony orchestra, concert band, wind symphony, symphonic band and concert choir. The auditorium would also provide space for public lectures and theatrical performances, Gearhart said.
UA anticipates hosting 175 to 200 events annually in the performance hall, he said.
In 2010, the board that oversees Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville, which includes representatives of the university, voted to pursue a new 2,200-seat hall “in or near downtown Bentonville” and a new 600-seat multipurpose auditorium in Fayetteville “on or adjacent to the current WAC facility” on Dickson Street.
The men’s gym is about three-quarters of a mile from the arts center.
Terri Trotter, the arts center’s chief operating officer, said UA’s concert hall will fulfill the need for a new auditorium in Fayetteville.
“We’re excited about the university’s plans,” Trotter said. “We’re really excited that the new hall is coming to fruition.”
The men’s gym, known as the Field House when the Razorbacks basketball team played there, was completed at a cost of $160,000 in time for the fall semester in 1937. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in September 1992 under the Men’s Gymnasium name, according to UA.
It has served various roles since the Razorback basketball team last played there in 1954, including a museum.
Last year, the university hired Chicago-based theater planning consultants Schuler Shook to study whether the gym could be converted to a concert hall. In a final report submitted to UA on Jan. 16, Shuler Shook concluded that with improvements, “the overall acoustic quality of the room will be generally excellent and comparable to other major state university music facilities.”
According to conceptual plans created in February by the Little Rock-based firm Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects, the concert hall will occupy most of the main floor level with the front part of the audience seating sloping down in both a main mezzanine level and in balconies.
The building currently serves as studio space for students in UA’s Fay Jones School of Architecture, whose Vol Walker Hall is undergoing a $36.6 million renovation and expansion. The students are scheduled to return to Vol Walker for the 2013-14 term.
The gym’s exterior would stay much the same, Johnson said, so that it could keep its historical designation.
Ronda Mains, head of the music department at UA, said the concert hall will “enhance the educational experience of more than 800 university students who are part of our larger performing groups.”
The new space will give music students the chance to practice in the space in which they perform, which isn’t happening at Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall, Mains said.
“This is so important to the mission of a university music department,” she said.
ENGINEERING HALL
UA has recommended two partnering architectural/engineering firms for the engineering hall renovation and expansion to the board of trustees’ buildings and grounds committee, with a preference for the partnership of Little Rock-based Wittenberg, Delony & Davidson Architects and HBRA Architects in Chicago.
The total projected cost: $22.5 million to refurbish the 85-year-old structure and build a 12,000-square-foot addition.
It will be financed through a combination of bond issue proceeds, the campus’ mandatory student facilities fee and private donations, Johnson said.
“We’re looking at the entire design but only doing pieces floor by floor,” he said.
White Hall, built in a Collegiate Gothic style recommended by UA’s 1925 master plan, has high architectural and historical value that calls for restoration, according to UA.
It is a primary contributing building to the University of Arkansas Campus Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.
The L-shaped building houses laboratories, classrooms and offices for the College of Engineering.
The first phase of the project will focus on the designof the 58,000-square-foot existing structure plus the addition, Johnson said. It also includes the transformationof 9,200 square feet of existing space on the first floor for UA’s new department of biomedical engineering.
The biomedical engineering suite will include two general labs, a tissue culture lab, a student study center, and a faculty and administrative office suite.
UA will upg rade the floor’s heating and cooling systems as well, Johnson said. Work on the labs is expected to start this fall with the completion of the entire suite scheduled for August 2013, he said.
This phase of work has an estimated cost of $4.35 million, he said.
“We’re excited about the new spaces,” said David Zaharoff, who holds UA’s21st century professorship in biomedical engineering. “Our labs are going to be on par or exceed any biomedical engineering labs in the country.”
The Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board approved UA’s request in April to create the department, effective July 1 and housed in the College of Engineering.
The formation of the department coincides with the initiation of the university’s new undergraduate and doctoral degree programs in biomedical engineering.
UA projects that with the two new degree programs, there will be a combined 240 students in the department by 2015.
There are about 100 biomedical engineering departments at colleges and universities in the United States, but this will be the first in Arkansas, according to UA.
“Obviously with biomedical engineering, that is something we are in need of right now,” said Terry Martin, interim dean of the engineering college. “We’ve had very limited labs in the building. This is a very timely renovation and upgrade for us.”
The total renovation of the engineering building calls for bringing the building’s mechanical, electrical and other systems to current code, Johnson said.
“What we’re trying to do is take a 1930s, 1940s building and keep the historical appearance and design but economically create ... a new academic facility,” he said.
The new wing will give the building’s footprint a U-shape that was originally intended in the 1920s. The addition will include a 200-to 300-seat classroom.
To contact this reporter:
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 13 on 07/08/2012