The Brickyard on the campus of North Carolina State University (NCSU) in Raleigh has turned to dust for the time being, but it will soon be jumping again with the construction of the school's innovative Integrative Sciences Building (ISB).
In addition, University Plaza will have some more sustainable features that will alleviate decades-old drainage issues in the most traveled part of NCSU's Central Campus, the school announced Aug. 31.
The biggest campus construction project for the next half-decade began over the summer, with site preparation for the ISB, an interdisciplinary showplace for innovation and education in the old footprint of Harrelson Hall.
"The Integrative Sciences Initiative [ISI] will transform teaching, research and discovery in chemistry and other STEM fields at N.C. State by employing the latest technology, solving major societal challenges and training a new generation of interdisciplinary scientists ready for every future opportunity," according to a statement from the office of Provost Warwick Arden.
Work on the $180 million, 153,000 sq.-ft. structure — with half of the funds coming from the State of North Carolina and the rest from NCSU fundraising — began when crews from Skanska Inc. began excavating the site earlier this summer.
It is one of several construction and renovation projects that greeted students and faculty when they returned to campus in August.
Preparation and construction are slated to continue through 2026, with a move-in slated for 2027, said NCSU Assistant Vice Chancellor of Design and Construction Cameron Smith.
"We won't be moved in until [that summer] because so much has to happen — security, locks, keys, lab move-ins and building commissioning — after we finish construction," he explained. "Buildings like this are just so much more complex, and they take longer to shake out and make sure everything is functioning."
It will be a modern replacement for Harrelson Hall, the 64-year-old circular general education building that was demolished in 2016.
The ISB will be the first new structure on N.C. State's main campus since the $36 million, 119,000-sq.-ft. SAS Hall, a math and statistics building, opened in 2009 on Katharine Stinson Drive.
When it opens, ISB will become the university's STEM hub, but much more collaborative than Harrelson's multidisciplinary hodgepodge of unrelated subjects, when students could circle the corkscrew hallway on their way from differential equations to the history of the American South to various classes in philosophy, religion and foreign languages.
"It's rare that we tear down a building, but Harrelson was beyond its useful life," Smith said. "The ISB will be different because, in the past, we have mostly built facilities for one college. The Provost's Office has said we are never going to do that again, that we are going to build for multiple colleges, for interdisciplinary efforts on campus."
For now, though, the ISB site is fenced in for staging, excavation, and the first phase of construction, with new pedestrian walkways for students, faculty and staff to navigate to the buildings and green spaces that encircle the Brickyard.
The first structural construction will begin next spring, according to Smith.
Permeable Pavers to Better Drain the Brickyard
When the ISB project is finished, about the same time as this year's freshman class prepares for commencement, the Brickyard will also have a familiar look but a far different structure, as most of the half-million bricks installed as part of original design will be replaced with permeable pavers that will help mitigate the age-old stormwater management problems that have plagued the site since Harrelson opened in 1962.
"We have water that comes down from Hillsborough Street to the north and water coming from east to west that flows around Dabney Hall, Cox Hall, and the Bureau of Mines," Smith explained. "The stormwater pipe that goes under the railroad tracks isn't quite big enough to handle it all. What we are trying to do is manage the water and slow it down before it gets there."
A permeable paver system, he added, will allow water to infiltrate through the brick into a sophisticated infiltration and drainage system underneath the brick pavers. All are similarly sized but have two small tabs on both sides that provide space between them. A drainage system underneath makes stormwater runoff slower and more methodical than typical surface runoff.
NCSU Has Projects Worth Millions More in the Works
The ISB construction and Brickyard upgrades are NCSU's highest profile projects among its more than $1 billion in capital improvements to primarily STEM-focused facilities on the oldest parts of the campus.
The work comes after some four decades of development at the university's Centennial Campus, which was followed by another 10-plus years of improvements and renovations to student activities and service buildings on the South Campus. Those updates included improvements to Talley Student Union, Carmichael Gymnasium and Reynolds Coliseum.
Over the next five to seven years, NCSU announced, work approved in the newest Physical Master Plan will include a $15 million renovation of Page Hall and a $42 million renovation of 111 Lampe Drive.
Pending full funding from the North Carolina General Assembly, additional projects will be tackled, among them a $36 million renovation of Mann Hall, a $73 million upgrade of Polk Hall and a $60 million rehabilitation of Dabney Hall, the school said.
All of that building improvement will bring disruption up and down Broughton Drive, traditionally the busiest part of the Raleigh campus.
"There may be a point in time where we will have what I am calling a ‘perfect storm' of construction overlap at Mann, Polk, Dabney, and ISB," said Smith. "It will be a challenge, but it is all necessary to renovate and reuse those buildings."
Other future expansion projects will include a $120 million equine addition to the large-animal hospital at the College of Veterinary Medicine along William Moore Drive, and another building on Centennial Campus to support the addition of more than 4,000 students in the College of Engineering.
Some construction was completed earlier this summer, Smith said, like a new satellite parking lot on Varsity Drive, south of Western Boulevard.
And work is continuing on Phases II and III of Power Forward, a four-year, $60 million upgrade to N.C. State's underground electrical distribution system along the east side of campus, and both north and south of the railroad tracks toward Holladay and Winslow halls working back to the west toward the Court of North Carolina. That project is expected to be completed by 2026.
In addition, he noted, there are some 300 projects of less than $500,000 each that are currently under way, with a total value of about $38 million, designed to support the university's academic and research missions.
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