Opening Soon
A roundup of just some of the new structures you won’t recognize on your next visit to Grounds
Beeping construction trucks and scaffolding dot the UVA landscape these days. From massive renovations, like the complete makeover of Alderman Library, to brand-new spaces, like the opening of a luxury hotel at Darden, UVA is experiencing a major construction boom.
Dollar estimates, taken from UVA’s Major Capital Plan and published reports, simply offer a ballpark sense. Supply-chain issues, labor shortages and other industry trends continue to drive up construction costs and may well affect final price tags.
Here’s a look at what’s popping up across Grounds.
Emmet-Ivy Area
Once a hodgepodge of commercial and UVA-owned buildings, the northwest corner of Emmet Street and Ivy Road is in the midst of a transformation, part of a decades-long plan to turn the parcel into a major UVA gateway.
Emerging on the site that once held the Cavalier Inn are two new buildings, along with a series of stormwater and landscaping improvements.
Ground was broken for the four-story, 60,000-square-foot School of Data Science in October 2021; it’s slated to open in spring 2024, said Alice Raucher, University architect. The estimated cost is $53 million.
Construction officially started on the 223,000-square-foot hotel and conference center, which will include 214 hotel rooms, in October 2022. The project, with an estimated budget of $168 million, is scheduled to open in spring or summer 2025.
And there’s more to come. In December, UVA’s Board of Visitors reviewed plans for the site’s second academic building, the Karsh Institute of Democracy, which will feature research, programs and partnerships focusing on democratic culture; laws and institutions; and social and economic conditions. The four-story, 65,000-square-foot building will include a 425-seat auditorium for in-person and virtual events. The building, with an estimated budget of $80 million, could open sometime in 2026.
Also planned for the site is a new performing arts center, which is still in the fundraising, planning and design stage. Plans call for a concert hall and a smaller recital hall.
“It’s pretty exciting what’s happened in the last six years,” Raucher said. “You’re going to have three buildings, maybe four, in the next five to seven years.”
Darden’s New Hotel and Conference Center
Gone is the Darden Inn, an aging, 199-room hotel without much else—no classrooms or meeting facilities. In its place is a high-end boutique hotel and conference center designed to support Darden’s growing executive education programs and provide a space for visiting business leaders and other gatherings and visitors to UVA and Charlottesville. The Forum Hotel served its first guests in April.
The new center is a continuation of the mission for Darden—connecting current business practices with instruction, discussion and research, said Ashley Williams (Com ’94), CEO and chief learning officer of executive education and lifelong learning at Darden.
But to attract top leaders, corporations and students to Darden Grounds, the school needed to have top-notch facilities. “The expectations are for folks that are coming in that you’re going to have world-class facilities,” Williams said.
The complex, which was estimated to cost about $90 million when it was announced, has 198 rooms of which 10 are guest suites, 11,500 square feet of meeting spaces and classrooms, a 6,000-square-foot ballroom, and a restaurant and pub. Outside is a large arboretum with tiered outdoor classroom spaces and more room for learning and development. The arboretum offers an easier walking connection between the law school and Darden. “It’s really an activation of North Grounds,” Williams said.
In a companion project, C. Ray Smith Alumni Hall, once attached to the former Darden Inn, has undergone extensive renovations and is home to the Sands Institute for Lifelong Learning. It reopened in March.
Contemplative Commons
Along Emmet Street and overlooking the Dell, the Contemplative Commons building, with an estimated budget of $72.6 million, will house the Contemplative Sciences Center. The center’s mission is to “advance the study and application of human flourishing” at every level of education—from kindergarten to adult learning. The 57,000-square-foot building is scheduled to open in fall 2023 and is intended for myriad uses. Spaces are designed to be easily configured for everything from a class to dance performances and other extracurricular activities.
The building’s largest room will sit just off its courtyard and includes tall glass doors that fold away, allowing for indoor-outdoor events that look out on the Dell.
“We’ve designed it so that it’s incredibly flexible,” Raucher said. “There’s a lot of furniture storage and other storage so that the rooms can be used for a variety of different setups—from seminars to banquets to yoga retreats.”
The U-shaped building incorporates views of the Dell and its pond, and the project also includes a new pedestrian bridge over Emmet Street that connects it with Central Grounds. “That building is really a nexus for Grounds because it has an accessible bridge,” Raucher said.
Gilmer Hall
When Gilmer Hall was built in the 1960s, the general attitude toward laboratory research was to keep it hidden, said Luis Carrazana, UVA’s associate architect. And the building’s design, with siloed labs that didn’t invite collaboration and a prominent concrete block façade, reflected that point of view. “It was actually very dark in Gilmer,” Carrazana said.
Today, attitudes about science have shifted, and the goal is to show off research and get students excited about the science that’s happening inside, he said. That new outlook is echoed in Gilmer’s massive renovation, which was finished in fall 2022. “There’s so much daylight,” he said. “It’s a complete transformation from what it once was.”
To transform Gilmer, workers gutted the interior and pulled down more than 50 percent of its exterior shell. That concrete block façade that once faced McCormick Road has been replaced with a wall of glass. Those once closed-off labs have been turned into flexible research spaces where biology and psychology researchers can work together.
“It’s a big open laboratory,” Carrazana said.
Gilmer’s neighbor, the Chemistry Building, was part of the same project and was completed in 2020. The 1960s-era buildings needed extensive updating, including improvements to mechanical systems that will make operations more sustainable and energy efficient. Work on both buildings totaled about $197 million in construction costs.
“This is a great example of using vintage research buildings and giving them another 40 to 50 years of life,”
Carrazana said.
Memorial Gym
Mem Gym opened in 1924 and has been in constant use ever since, serving today as the headquarters for UVA’s volleyball and wrestling teams and housing classrooms for the kinesiology department and space for other student programs. “The building, because it’s been so busy, hasn’t had a really comprehensive renovation,” said Brian Hogg (Col ’83), senior historic preservation planner.
As a result, the building’s plumbing and electrical systems are “absolutely ancient,” Hogg said. Some of the plumbing was still original, and two wings don’t have central air. The current project involves a comprehensive upgrade to the building’s mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, along with a freshening up of some classrooms and office space.
The interior work is part of a years-long effort to update the entire building. A new roof was installed about five years ago. Another project focused on the
exterior façade and was finished in 2022.
“There’s been a series of projects that have been incrementally improving the building, and this mechanical improvement is the big last step,” Hogg said. If everything goes as planned, the $20.5 million project could be complete in 2024 for the building’s centennial anniversary. But crews have a lot to work around. The building won’t be shut down, Hogg said.
Pavilion VIII Rehab and Restoration
Pavilion VIII has done more work than the average pavilion on the Lawn. From about World War II to 1984, it served as the office of the UVA president and Board of Visitors. For the past 35 years, it housed two apartments, an office for the University Guide Service and classroom space. And just a few years ago, it provided a home for UVA President James E. Ryan (Law ’92) while Carr’s Hill was restored.
With so much going on inside, there wasn’t time for restoration and rehabilitation. “It’s been 35 years since major work has been done on the building, and it was time,” Hogg said.
The $4.75 million project started in 2020 and wrapped up in fall 2022. The complete renovation included new kitchens and bathrooms and flat-screen TVs and computers in the classrooms. Teams also restored the Thomas Jefferson-designed cornices inside and the original stone capitals outside the building, which Jefferson ordered from Carrara, Italy.
“Everything we do in the student rooms and in the Pavilions is striking the balance between really being very respectful of the historic fabric of the buildings and their original design and character and making sure that they’re comfortable places for modern life, so that people will continue to live there,” Hogg said.
As part of the project, UVA did some detective work on the building, too. In the 1830s, about the same time the roof on Pavilion VIII and others on the Lawn were being replaced because Jefferson’s original design leaked so badly, early resident and UVA professor Charles Bonnycastle received a patent for a new metal roof design.
As the pavilion was prepared for construction, metal pieces that correspond to Bonnycastle’s drawings were found in the attic, Hogg said. Later, crews also found screw holes in the roof that show the pattern of installation of Bonnycastle’s design.
Bonnycastle’s roof, which appears to have lasted for about 20 years, was too expensive to re-create now. But, Hogg said, “if our successors want to try to recapture Bonnycastle’s roof, we have a good trail of evidence.”
Alderman Library
Not too long after the new year, Alderman Library should be reopened for business. The $160 million renovation and expansion to the 1930s-era building launched in 2020 and included razing the former stacks to make way for more modern spaces, designed for comfort and safety.
“Historic Alderman has been taken apart and rebuilt, lovingly,” Raucher said. “All the historic rooms are going to look completely refreshed.”
The project includes the construction of 130,000 square feet of new space, in about the same area as the old stacks, and the renovation of 100,000 square feet of existing rooms. When it reopens, students and researchers will still have access to 1 million books inside the updated library’s new stacks, but the project also makes way for better study spaces and access to natural light through two light wells.
The exterior is getting an update too, particularly the once bunkerlike north façade. Once complete, Alderman’s new north side will invite people in with plazas and an entrance. “The old stacks really turned its back on the city and the public,” Raucher said. “This is a whole new entry on the north side.”
McIntire School of Commerce expansion
Fifteen years ago, the McIntire School of Commerce moved out of Monroe Hall and back onto the Lawn, taking over Rouss Hall and the newly constructed Robertson Hall. Now, a project is poised to give the school even more room. In September 2022, UVA broke ground on a new building—Shumway Hall—and an updated Cobb Hall, built in 1917, next door.
The project, with an estimated budget of $139 million, is expected to open in spring 2025 and will add nearly 100,000 square feet for the school, including classrooms, innovation labs, a two-story Student Success Center for academic advising and career development, and a cafe. An underground corridor will connect Cobb and Shumway halls with Rouss and Robertson halls.
Athletics Complex
The demolition of University Hall in 2019 made room for the construction of a new sports complex dedicated to football and Olympic sports at UVA. Work is underway on the 90,000-square-foot football operations center, with an $80 million price tag. Next door to the football center and across Massie Road from John Paul Jones Arena, a $75 million project to build a new Olympic sports center and renovate the McCue Center was scheduled to start in spring 2023.
The McCue Center has been the headquarters for UVA’s football team since 1991, but will serve so-called Olympic sports—field hockey, cross country, track and field, lacrosse, soccer, rowing, softball, volleyball, and wrestling—once the new football operations center is complete. The master plan for the area also includes a promenade between the football and Olympic sports centers that will provide a new connection and gathering spot for pedestrians between the athletic complex and Central and North Grounds.
The football operations center is expected to open in spring 2024. The Olympic sports center is slated for a 2025 opening.
Brandon Avenue Dorms
Work to overhaul a stretch of Brandon Avenue, south of Jefferson Park Avenue, adding more dorm space for upperclass students, continues. Bond and Bice houses were the first UVA dorms to open in the area; Bond House in 2019 and Bice House in 1972. UVA’s new four-story Student Health and Wellness building opened in 2021.
Two more residence halls are under construction with fall 2024 opening dates and an estimated budget of $114 million. The five- and six-story buildings will include 350 bedrooms, a dining facility and study space. Once complete, the dorms will join Bond and Bice houses and nearby residential language houses to provide housing for about 900 students in the area. “It’s going to be a pretty vibrant, student-focused neighborhood,” Raucher said.