University of North Georgia staff announced this week that the Gainesville campus expansion project, which took over the old Lanier Technical College campus, is near completion and should be ready for instruction as soon as next fall.
"We anticipate to finish the construction in the spring and during the summer and then we'll have students in the spaces in August," said Ken Crowe, assistant vice president of facilities at UNG.
Indoor renovations of the buildings on the property are almost finished, with work on the exteriors underway. According to the university website, the buildings are almost ready for furniture and equipment.
Once completed, the buildings will house in total five university departments, one institutional service department and one student services center.
One of the buildings in the project is already complete. The Student Health Services building opened in January of this year.
The next building to reach completion will be the Film and Digital Media Building, which will house the Department of Communication, Media & Journalism. This building will feature new rooms benefitting instruction in this department, including three sound stages, a writer’s room, and two private editing rooms.
Another building, the Health Sciences Building, will bring together the Information Technology and Department of Nursing under one roof. Currently these departments are spread out in different buildings across campus.
The new Health Sciences Building also provides more room for the ever-expanding Department of Nursing. This building will provide a larger simulation lab and more Technology-Enabled Active Learning classrooms.
"We had the opportunity to really build a state-of-the-art nursing suite, which will allow us to, I believe, double our nursing cohort," said Crowe.
The fourth building on the property, the Arts and Technology Building, will be home to the Institute of Environmental and Spatial Analysis, the Office and Professional and Continuing Education and the Department of Visual Arts. This building will feature additional classrooms and office space for these departments.
In addition to rooms specialized for their department’s instruction, each building will include more study rooms similar to those in the Martha T. Nesbitt Academic Building.
The university officially took ownership of the property in July of last year. Local contractor Carroll Daniel Construction Company has worked with university staff on the project.
