Building up the hype

New construction continues to change the landscape of Liberty’s campus

 

Campus this fall were welcomed with brand new buildings and facilities representing a summer’s worth of hard work from construction teams working on the campus.

 

Many Liberty freshmen moved into the new Residential Commons III building with room for 784 students.

 

The building was finished just days before students were scheduled to move in. 

 

Liberty Vice President of Major Construction Daniel Deter said the Commons III building was the result of a lot of determination from the construction crews.

 

“We built Commons III in 12 months, and that means we did a 16-18 month project in 12 months,” Deter said. 

 

“I’m very pleased with the way the construction team pulled together and got it done, and I’m very pleased with the way that it turned out.”

 

Commons III was not the only construction project the team worked on this summer. 

 

The 90,000-square-foot indoor Liberty football practice facility was finished in June with plans to continue small renovations in the coming months, including a visitor’s locker room to be finished around January or February.

 

This season, visiting football teams will use the soccer locker rooms for their games. 

 

The Freedom Tower now stands as the tallest building in Lynchburg, according to the Liberty University News Service, and has an expected completion date of December 2017.

Classes will be held in the Freedom Tower in the spring semester.

 

Liberty Athletics Center located next to the soccer stadium will open October 16th, and the new 75,000-square-foot natatorium will host its first swim meet the first weekend of December.

 

“The summer construction projects really went as planned, particularly with the Commons III dorm,” Deter said.

 

According to Deter, the university has also updated traffic patterns and parking to alleviate some of the pressure of campus traffic.

 

“Improving parking is an ongoing issue, and it’s not like we can just sit down and make a decision that will solve the whole thing,” Deter said.

 

“It’s kind of a living animal that we try to evaluate and make it better every year.”

One change is a traffic light at the intersection near the tunnel connecting Liberty to Wards Road.

 

After considering several options, Deter said the traffic light proved to be the best approach for better flow of traffic.

 

“It was becoming where it wasn’t safe for pedestrians or vehicular traffic, and the traffic light in our modeling proved to be the best way for the intersection to flow traffic and also be safer for pedestrians,” Deter said. 

 

“Students are our number one safety concern, and we want to make sure that our students are safe.”

 

Deter says over the next few weeks the Planning & Construction Department will be keeping track of how many cars are flowing in each direction via a camera attached to the light. 

 

Deter also said they purposefully saved traffic and road work for the summer as to not inconvenience students.

 

“My personal philosophy is I try to understand that the students have a four-year educational experience, and I don’t want the students to look at any more construction than they have to,” Deter said. 

 

“I wouldn’t say that the students are a hindrance to us. I would say that we try to accommodate the students’ education the best way we can because Liberty is here for the students and not here for construction. We’re here to serve students and not the other way around.”

 

In an effort to meet the parking dilemma, the construction team is speeding up the process of opening the parking lot near the indoor track and natatorium to open up more spaces. 

 

Deter said they are continuing to think of ways to improve campus parking.

 

Other new additions to Liberty’s campus on the horizon include the new three-story, 80,000-square-foot school of business, which will be ready to open in December 2018, the student health clinic moving from Green Hall to Commons III for the spring semester, and the Williams Stadium expansion to 25,000 seats for the 2018 season.

 

This new amount of seats will put Liberty in a tie with James Madison University for the fourth-largest football stadium in Virginia, just behind Virginia Tech, University of Virginia and Norfolk State.

 

Through all of the construction happening at Liberty, Deter said the ultimate purpose and driving force of all of the projects is to provide students the best opportunity for future success.

 

“I think seeing the students using the building as it was intended is the greatest part of the process for me,” Deter said.

 

“We spend a lot of hours in meetings and there is a lot of effort that goes into these new facilities, but the students get so much value out of the new buildings. These are our future champions, and so we want them to have the best facilities we can give them in order for them to be successful.”

 

COCKES is a news reporter.