The University of Virginia's Alumni Association has submitted a preliminary site plan for a new Alumni Hall building at the intersection of Emmet Street and Lewis Mountain Road in Charlottesville.
The proposed building on 3.15 acres will be a complete rebuild with a more contemporary interior and more public-use event spaces than the current facility, according to a May 18 report in the Cavalier Daily, UVA's independent student-run newspaper.
Centerbrook Architects and Planners, a Connecticut firm that also has worked with Yale and Duke University, designed the proposed plan.
Support for the development project will come from a fundraising campaign, said Lily West, UVA's Alumni Association president and CEO. As the effort is still in the initial stages of planning, she told the campus newspaper that large-scale fundraising efforts have yet to begin.
The current Alumni Hall building is used throughout the year to host several events for students, UVA administrators and alumni, and includes bingo nights, reunions and football tailgates.
But West said the association's work often involves hosting large groups, and that the rooms within the existing Alumni Hall building are not big enough to accommodate these kinds of gatherings.
She also noted that the building, which the Alumni Association has operated since 1936, often impedes the group's work because of its outdated technology. As a result, a new facility is required that has multi-use spaces able to hold large crowds of people and make use of interactive digital exhibits.
West added that the proposed new building's increased flexibility would allow the organization to reimagine current events, provide more services to its 270,000-member network worldwide, and create additional partnerships across the UVA campus grounds.
"Our new building will allow us to do the good work we're already doing, in addition to facilitating new forms of alumni engagement that will benefit the entire university community," she explained.
Because of the age and deterioration of the current building, including water damage and outdated hardware, West said the alumni association often struggles to perform even its daily operations.
For instance, connecting past graduates to the university through Alumni Hall is critical because alumni can be instrumental in helping the prestigious school grow, evolve and meet the needs of future generations when they feel invested in its needs.
"Now more than ever, having an engaged alumni base is essential to having a thriving university," she elaborated. "In order for that to be true, not only do you need passionate, involved alumni, but you need a facility that can service their needs and facilitate the work that we do."
New Plans Must Reviewed by City Officials
The Alumni Association's independence from UVA means that it must pay property taxes to the city of Charlottesville, and the building must follow the municipality's land-use regulations.
According to the Cavalier Daily, the alumni group submitted a preliminary site proposal last August to the city's Department of Neighborhood Development Services.
Charlottesville City Planner Dannan O'Connell said after the preliminary plan is approved following reviews by the city, the UVA alumni organization will submit a final site plan that also will be reviewed.
He told the Daily Cavalier that while the number of reviews it can take for a site plan to be approved varies between projects, the Alumni Hall proposal appeared straightforward to him and will likely not be difficult to push through the review process.
O'Connell added that the plan will be considered a by-right project, meaning the proposal does not have to be voted on by the Charlottesville City Council, thus further streamlining the process.
He also noted that the renovation would not have enough of an impact on traffic in the area to merit a traffic study, although plans to change the traffic pattern around the new building have been made to divert vehicles from the residential areas of Lewis Mountain Road and Emmet Street to Sprigg Lane.
According to O'Connell, this means the new building would have less of an impact on nearby residents and those living off Lewis Mountain Road.
A new Alumni Hall also is not required to add more parking spaces than the current facility due to a provision in the city's new zoning ordinance.
"Minimizing disruption to the neighborhood and those other properties that abut [Alumni Hall is] a top priority," West explained. "We want to be good neighbors — my hope is we've always been good neighbors — and we want to continue that through this process and be as mindful as we can about minimizing disruption."
Thomas Boyd, a UVA graduate and resident of the Lewis Mountain neighborhood, told the Daily Cavalier that he and his neighbors currently experience traffic slowdowns due to various other construction projects along Emmett Street and Alderman Road, including the university's new Contemplative Commons, its Ivy Corridor projects and scoreboard renovations at Scott Stadium.
Despite those disruptions, however, Boyd said he thinks the Alumni Hall renovation is a beneficial project and that he is not particularly concerned by potential slowdown and traffic issues.
"I think that during that construction, [the Alumni Association] will do all they can to help mitigate problems," he commented. "There will be some slowdown and probably some traffic issues that we'll have to deal with, but hopefully some of the other [renovations] that are going on right now will be over."
Although the Alumni Hall proposal is moving through the city council's review process, the project is still years away from becoming a reality, West said, and the timeline for the development depends on when the alumni association is able to secure funding for it.
"We are really at the beginning of that process," she explained. "In many ways, there's a lot more work to be done before we talk about breaking ground."
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