Radford U Breaks Ground for New Business-Econ Building

Artists drawing of the new Radford University building.^

That's President Penny Kyle (red suit, center) and Dean Faye Gilbert (beside Kyle) breaking ground.^

Radford University officials have broken ground on a new $44 million, 110,000-square-foot home for the College of Business and Economics (COBE). It is a LEED certified building. The planned completion date is fall 2012 when COBE faculty, staff, and students will move out of their current home in Whitt Hall.

“This new building will make a very bold, very confident statement about what the world can expect from Radford University and the Radford University College of Business and Economics,” says President Penelope W. Kyle.

Located at the corner of Jefferson Street and Tyler Avenue, the new signature building will also redefine the gateway to campus. “Visitors will see a beautiful, traditional, but modern building that makes the right kind of statement about a university that is on the move,” says Thomas E. Fraim, rector of RU’s Board of Visitors.

The project is the result of a public-private partnership in which the Commonwealth of Virginia will invest $34 million and RU will raise the remaining $10 million. The new COBE home will include auditorium-style classrooms, conference rooms, and gathering spaces designed to stimulate collaboration and teamwork. It will also feature the latest in educational technology and financial research capabilities, including a “trading room.”

“Our new building…is called a ‘transitional design,’” says COBE Dean Faye W. Gilbert. “We consciously wanted the building to incorporate RU’s traditions and at the same time convey the impression that this is a university that is moving forward. Each room and space in the new building will accommodate the latest technology and enhance our ability to reach out and develop the distinctive connections that come from ‘teaching in person.’”