Campus Construction Update, November 6, 2024

Campus Construction Updates

Dave Blanks sits down with Nick Katers, Appalachian State’s Associate Vice Chancellor of Facilities Management, to talk about the new addition to Peacock Hall, home of the largest undergraduate College of Business in the UNC system. The two discuss the history of the Walker College of Business, the reasons behind the expansion to Peacock Hall, and what folks can expect during and after the project. Nick shares how this $40 million project is part of a phased transformation, set to finish in August 2026, that will ultimately include the long-awaited “daylighting” of Boone Creek to bring natural spaces to campus. Find out what’s next for this landmark project at Appalachian State! (Recorded September 18, 2024)

TRANSCRIPT

Dave Blanks:

Hey folks. How's it going? I'm Dave Blanks from University Communications back with another campus construction update. I am joined today in studio by Nick Katers, Associate Vice Chancellor of Facilities Management. Howdy, Nick. How's it going?

Nick Katers:

Dave, it's good to be a part of this first one on video.

Dave Blanks:

Man, I know. I'm excited. It's very different. We've been exposed. Here we are. This is what we actually look like.

Nick Katers:

Right.

Dave Blanks:

Yeah, so we'll see how it goes. Today's topic is Peacock Hall, the addition to Peacock. Here's the plan for today. We'll see if I pull it off. We're going to start off with a little history lesson that'll take us up to present day just about the College of Business at Appalachian State.

Nick Katers:

Sure.

Dave Blanks:

After I get through with that, we're going to discuss the need for the addition, which is the topic today, and then we'll share some details on what that addition consists of, who it's going to benefit, how long is it going to take, what's the impact that we're going to deal with while it's being constructed and then just some of the positive stuff that's going to happen after it's built.

Nick Katers:

Great. Okay.

Dave Blanks:

So, yeah, how does that sound? Good plan?

Nick Katers:

It sounds good.

Dave Blanks:

I'm going to start out with my history lesson of the College of Business. Before I went to business.appstate.edu, I knew some of this, I didn't know all of this. We're starting in 1970, when the College of Business is officially founded at Appalachian State. So when it started, small and business classes were held in Smith-Wright Hall, which was part of the New Deal. It was a public works administration building, funded and completed by the PWA, and it was completed in 1940. Interesting little bit of history there. It's the current home of the Department of Psychology and it's right next door to us. But they weren't in there for long because Walker Hall was completed in 1975 and the College of Business moved there in '76. Walker College of Business and Walker Hall are both named in honor of John A. Walker. He was a Lowe's Company's founding director and always a strong supporter of Appalachian State and the College of Business.

15 years later, 1990, faculty and staff moved from Walker into a new College of Business building, 130,000 square feet, four-story structure in the middle of App's campus, named and dedicated in honor of Thelma, C. Raley. The dedication came in '93, the building was built in 1990. Then in 2014, with the Raley family's blessing, Raley Hall became Peacock Hall in honor of outgoing Chancellor Dr. Kenneth Peacock. And that takes us up to the addition is the next thing. But yeah, interesting history of the Walker College of Business. You can check it out at business.appstate.edu and we'll also put it in the show notes. Today's topic is the addition at Peacock Hall. So can we discuss a little bit about the need for the addition? We've mentioned it on previous campus construction updates, but why do we need an addition to Peacock?

Nick Katers:

Well, I think you could start out with just by looking at the age of Peacock, former Raley Hall, like you said, built in 1990. It's 30 years old, so it was time to start considering a renovation. So a renovation of 130,000 square foot building is pretty expensive. At the same time the college of business is growing and growing and growing and it's literally bursting from the amount of students that are now involved in this program.

Dave Blanks:

What were you telling me that about the-

Nick Katers:

It's the largest undergraduate college of business in the UNC system.

Dave Blanks:

Wow.

Nick Katers:

And you wouldn't think that here. We're famous for a lot of things, teachers, nurses, stuff, but the College of Business, it was a little unexpected to hear that fact. But what that really meant is they had to make a choice. Do we want to do the renovation and take the building offline or do we want to try to make more space for it? So it's kind of a phased project. They made the decision to construct an addition. So again, the renovation probably would've cost in the neighborhood of 50 to 65 million dollars three or four years ago when we started talking about it, but an addition was going to be a lot cheaper than that. We were really focused on a number of about $25 million is what we thought we could get from the legislature, that would've given us a 50,000 square foot addition back in the day. That's $500 a square foot. Well, since we started looking at this in 2021, three years have passed and now we're really looking at closer to $800 a square foot.

So in the 2021/22 biennium, the legislature gave us $25 million. We went through the preliminary design functions. We came up with a 50,000 square foot addition, a nice round extension of the building, but that turned out to only give us enough for two floors. So we went back in '23 and '24 to that budget biennium and we were able to get another $15 million based on the design that we went. So now we have $40 million total to do an addition, a 50,000 square foot addition to 130,000 square foot building, which will make it now the third-largest building in App's inventory. This will give the College of Business room to grow for a number of years. While it doesn't address some of the older portions of the existing building, that can be a later follow-on phase. We are going to do some minor renovations of the existing building. We'll probably improve the HVAC quite a bit because we're bringing in new chillers, we're replacing the elevator carriages that are in the older portion of the building and we're getting rid of that glass half-moon rotunda area.

Dave Blanks:

Right.

Nick Katers:

And it's going to be completely enclosed.

Dave Blanks:

Okay. Is the new addition... And we'll show some pictures of that as well.

Nick Katers:

Sure.

Dave Blanks:

And you can see those on the future site, which we'll also link in the show notes. But is the new edition actually taking over the place where that little curved thing is?

Nick Katers:

Yeah.

Dave Blanks:

I know it's stretching out into the parking lot, into Peacock parking lot. So yeah, that'll kind of-

Nick Katers:

Yeah. Think of the glass Rotunda outdoor structure as now kind of the center of the building and we're going to build out into what was the patio area and as far out as where the AppalCART bus stop was. So all of the patio will be taken up and probably two or three rows of parking that went into the Peacock lot. And that old glass feature will become an enclosed rotunda, similar to what you see in the library.

Dave Blanks:

Okay, yeah.

Nick Katers:

Something that's more of a structural internal feature instead of an external feature.

Dave Blanks:

Right. And it's like a semicircle right now.

Nick Katers:

Right.

Dave Blanks:

It'll be a full circle.

Nick Katers:

A full rotunda. Yes.

Dave Blanks:

Okay. Gotcha. Anything else you want to cover as far as the exterior changes? And you did talk about the HVAC as well.

Nick Katers:

We're going to try our best to match the new construction to the old building, but we're talking about 30-year-old bricks and a 30-year-old facade.

Dave Blanks:

Speaking of bricks, it did win an award when it was built. It won an award, and I'm going to mess it up, but it was from the Brick Association of either America or North Carolina because of its use of bricks.

Nick Katers:

Right.

Dave Blanks:

I found that interesting. Yeah, I don't know.

Nick Katers:

It's a little bit off color from our campus design standards. So it'll be interesting to try to match some of the older structural features. The Peacock building's kind of square, and this is going to be more modern and round and a lot more glass in the addition.

Dave Blanks:

Right. Yeah, it looks beautiful. And as I said, we'll share some pictures of it as well. So Nick, can you tell me a little bit about the design?

Nick Katers:

Sure, sure. We started design in 2022 and that's when we kind of figured out we didn't have enough money for the thing we wanted. Well, we were able to bring in Charlotte architect McMillan Pazdan Smith to be able to give us something innovative and new that would still fit within the campus design. So they started in 2023 with the new design, which is the rounded design. And then in late 2023, we chose local builder of Vannoy Construction out of Jefferson to be the construction manager at risk for the project. So now that the team is assembled, they were able to really start moving on this. Ironically, we also use them for Duncan, knowing that we were going to share a lot of laydown space.

Dave Blanks:

It's right there. Yeah.

Nick Katers:

Yeah. It didn't make sense to have two completely different construction contractors so close to each other. This way, we were able to share the architectural design, share the laydown space. And the construction contractor could do a renovation in one building and an addition on the other.

Dave Blanks:

Yeah, there's a lot of crossover between the equipment they're going to be using.

Nick Katers:

Right, absolutely.

Dave Blanks:

And like you said, the space for laydown.

Nick Katers:

And it helped with phasing.

Dave Blanks:

Yeah.

Nick Katers:

A lot of people ask me, why does Peacock, why is it going to take so long? Well, we have to get some of the other buildings done first. So we have Wey shut down right now and Duncan is shut down, there's no way that we could do another building at exactly the same time. We're finishing up Wey in Duncan now before the major disruptions to Peacock occur.

Dave Blanks:

Gotcha. Let's talk a little bit about how we're trying to avert some of those disruptions. It's an addition, it's not a renovation, so as far as the classes that are ongoing in Peacock, what's the difference? What are students going to see? Do you know what I mean?

Nick Katers:

What they're currently seeing right now is there's a construction impacted entrance from the River Street side, which will close pretty soon. As we complete the utility locations and start moving into the construction of the addition, the main entrance to Peacock will move up to the second story on the Howard Street side. So there will be some significant disruptions as people come out from the Octagon area or Chapel Wilson, they'll have to go up to Howard Street to get into Peacock Hall. So you've seen what has happened. We put up the fencing back in July. We took up about a hundred parking places out of the Peacock parking lot, which is a significant emotional event for a lot of people.

Dave Blanks:

I noticed. I was a little emotional about it, but since, I've dealt with it.

Nick Katers:

Right. And we were able to relocate a lot of the faculty to the New River Hall parking lot.

Dave Blanks:

There is that spillover there.

Nick Katers:

There's some spillover there. So once the fencing went up, we had to move five or six different categories of utilities that ran essentially underneath the patio out there. So all kinds of utility relocations from steam, water, sewer, fiber for IT, all of that has to be moved while we do the construction. So the patio demolition is now complete. We also had to reconfigure the Peacock parking lot, especially where the AppalCART bus stop was. That's probably the second most heavily used AppalCART stop. Other than the one up by the library.

Dave Blanks:

Is that the number one?

Nick Katers:

I think that's their-

Dave Blanks:

The library's more popular?

Nick Katers:

Yeah, that's the main stop. But Peacock gets a lot of traffic. And we had to pull the AppalCART bus stop about 30 meters closer to River Street and completely reconfigure that parking area.

Dave Blanks:

I have noticed that. But it seems to be working well. There's a section where the pedestrians can wait for the bus. There's a way to get through to the other side. You don't feel like you're out in traffic.

Nick Katers:

We definitely have to figure out a shelter.

Dave Blanks:

Right.

Nick Katers:

Because winter is coming.

Dave Blanks:

That is true. That is true.

Nick Katers:

So winter is coming, we got to get a shelter back out there.

Dave Blanks:

Was that a Game of Thrones reference, Nick?

Nick Katers:

Yeah, it was. It was.

Dave Blanks:

Yeah. All right, nice. So Nick, did we mention how long it's going to take? What's the timetable here for Peacock?

Nick Katers:

So really, phase two, which is the utility relocation, is going to wind up in about the January timeframe. So at that point, you'll start seeing new construction on. That phase three of the construction plan will take until August of 2026, about 18 months.

Dave Blanks:

Okay.

Nick Katers:

It's a significant endeavor to build that much new space. And it's a little bit complicated construction. It's not just a standard squared off building. It's not a regular box. It's more of a custom-made space. Again, I think phase three will definitely go through the summer of '26. We hope to be done a couple months early so that we can get everything sort of back in place. During that time, as the new building is attaching itself to the old building, there will be some disruptions on those walls. Probably 15 to 20 different spaces will be disrupted at various times. Most of those are not instructional space, so it's not as complicated as having to move all the classes. But there are some administrative office spaces and some conference spaces that will have to be disrupted while we tie into the old building.

Dave Blanks:

Gotcha. All right, well paint a picture. What are we working toward? What's it going to be like to walk into the new Peacock?

Nick Katers:

Sure. So the new Peacock will have its grand entrance right at the end of the wide walk between Chapel Wilson and in the Duncan Octagon. So you'll walk right into that. The first floor will open up into a very large two-story, student commons area. It'll have a smaller rotunda around the top. First floor, very large commons area, two large classrooms. And what the College of Business is really focused on is all of these collaboration spaces. For student work groups, for small seminars, for interview prep rooms, there'll be all kinds of reservable spaces on this first floor for students to be able to use for club activities and other things. You'll be able to look up into the second floor, which we'll have one other large classroom and it'll have three seminar and seven or eight collaborative spaces as well. As you get to the third floor, that becomes a whole floor that's not open to the bottom. And that'll have two more large classrooms, a couple of conference rooms. And here are the best features, 22 windowed offices that sort of look out south across the Peacock parking lot area towards the stadium complex.

Dave Blanks:

Oh, nice.

Nick Katers:

Those will be some of the most highly coveted offices, I think, on campus.

Dave Blanks:

Now, I did also hear about, what is it called, it's like a Bloomberg ticker machine?

Nick Katers:

A ticker.

Dave Blanks:

Yeah. Tell me a little about that.

Nick Katers:

Yeah. So what we've seen in the artist renderings is around the top portion of the first floor student commons would be a stock ticker.

Dave Blanks:

Right.

Nick Katers:

Essentially what you would see in any of the cable financial channels, those stock tickers would run constantly so students would be able to keep apprised of what's going on in the markets or other things.

Dave Blanks:

Cool.

Nick Katers:

Current updates on news. So I think the designer has really come up with some pretty innovative and modern spaces for this area.

Dave Blanks:

Well, that's exciting. Love to see Walker growing. I'm sure it will continue to grow even beyond this. I don't know, you don't have a crystal ball, how long is the college of business going to stay in this building? Do you have any idea? Can you even wager a guess?

Nick Katers:

So I would say this will set us up for 40 to 50 more years in this building.

Dave Blanks:

Okay.

Nick Katers:

Now we still have to go back and renovate the existing building.

Dave Blanks:

Right.

Nick Katers:

So that's within our planning horizon, within our six-year plan to go back and ask for that money. If you think about what we're doing now in the College of Business district, this is really phase one of three. We need to renovate and add the addition to Peacock. Then we need to start thinking about how do we replace all that parking that's out in that lot.

Dave Blanks:

Right.

Nick Katers:

Because our goal is to eventually get to phase three, which is to open up the creek that's underneath the Peacock parking lot and restore it back to a more natural environment.

Dave Blanks:

The daylighting of Boone Creek.

Nick Katers:

The daylighting, we've been talking about it for years.

Dave Blanks:

So long. Yeah, I know.

Nick Katers:

So finish this first, build a parking deck, then open the creek. That's how the sequence goes.

Dave Blanks:

All right, well, but that's years from now?

Nick Katers:

Within a five to 10 year horizon to try to get to the creek daylighting.

Dave Blanks:

Okay. All right. Well, it's exciting changes. And Nick, was there anything else you wanted to mention today? We talked about a lot.

Nick Katers:

I think we covered it.

Dave Blanks:

You're good?

Nick Katers:

Yeah.

Dave Blanks:

All right. Okay. Well, Nick Katers, thanks for your time. I really appreciate you being here. And we'll do it again. I'm sure I will force you to come back and hang out with me and talk about buildings. Does that sound good?

Nick Katers:

I like doing it. Thanks.

Dave Blanks:

All right. Good. That works out. Thank you.

Nick Katers:

All right.