“If we had not done that, then we would have had to build one Carolina North project at a time,” Evans said. “You’ve got to have a plan so you know what you want to do.”
But that assurance might not be enough for the law school.
Boger said officials have already began preparing for a bigger facility, although the earliest date the move could occur is 2014.
Construction on the new building was initially scheduled to be completed in 2012.
“It’s frustrating on the one hand,” Boger said. “We are working very hard to improve our faculty and the classes that we offer, and it’s hard to do in the facility that we have now.”
After structural integrity problems arose with the building that now houses the law school, Boger said officials had the choice to either renovate the current facility or construct a new building at Carolina North.
The renovation would have been 16th on a list of University building priorities, but the decision to move to Carolina North shot the project to first place.
“This is by far the fastest track for us,” Boger said.
Paying for it
The mixed-use campus, situated two miles north of UNC off of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, will be composed of housing, academic and research facilities and private development.
Evans said the housing units will pay for themselves through rent money, and private buildings, specifically the Innovation Center, will be paid for by the developer.
The Innovation Center is designed to house high-growth start-up companies with links to UNC research. The lack of private investment due to the recession, however, has resulted in stagnant development.
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Evans said academic facilities like the law school will have to wait for state funds.
Boger said the price tag for the new law building and all the surrounding infrastructure —the site lacks even the most basic of groundwork — will total nearly $150 million.
“If you built another building on North Campus or South Campus, there are already street lights,” Boger said. “There’s none of that at Carolina North.
“You can’t really construct a building until you’ve got roads to get to it.”
Boger said officials had hoped the cash-strapped state legislature would provide 90 percent of the funding for the building, a traditional amount for campus buildings. He said the law school does plan to raise anywhere from $10 million to $15 million in private funds as well.
But this can’t be done until there are architectural plans to present to potential donors. Even then, Boger said, officials have their work cut out for them.
“Professionals are very strapped for dollars,” he said. “We’re going to have our hands full.”
Expanding programs
In anticipation of the move to the satellite campus, Boger said law school officials took steps to improve the programs they offered. But the additions have come with a price, as now the staff and faculty are short on space.
“We had hoped to move forward rapidly,” he said. “We are enlarging the size of our faculty. We have added additional courses.
“Doing that in the present building has been very difficult.”
Boger said some programs within the law school, like the centers for civil rights, banking and poverty, had to be moved to Carr Mill Mall in Carrboro to accommodate the expansion.
“Now we’re operating in two codes, and that’s difficult,” Boger said. “The longer that goes on, the more difficulties that makes.”
For now, law school students and officials will just have to wait, but no one knows how long.
“A lot of worthy projects have been postponed,” Boger said. “There’s simply no money in the legislature.”
Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
