Big presser yesterday announcing the new Downtown University Campus on the corner of South Elm and Lee Street Gate City Blvd:
Three years from now, the Downtown University Campus might be a four-story building with a high-tech medical lab where nearly 400 nursing students and doctors from the region come to learn.
….The vision is of a shared college campus that will bring together the city’s five four-year colleges, GTCC and the Elon University law school. These seven institutions have about 47,000 college students. A not-yet-formed nonprofit will run it.
The first phase will have one building with a focus on health care. Organizers hope to start construction on a four-story building in early 2015 and open it in fall 2016. This first building will have 105,000 square feet and enough parking for at least 200 vehicles.
Anyone who’s lived in Greensboro for a while knows the city has been targeting this site for development for years. It was the original site for a downtown baseball stadium before land contamination put the brakes on that (the city has since cleaned up the property with help from a $3 million federal brownfields grant). Then there was talk of moving the Guilford County Schools administration building to the site —that idea went away quickly, as officials anticipated the reaction from taxpayers. Next up was a luxury hotel before former county commissioner and current legislature candidate Skip Alston got into the act and decided it needed to be across the street from his civil rights museum.
Lot has to happen before this project becomes reality, least of which is raising money. Needless to say it will be interesting to see how it all comes together.
