Before dealing with alterations to Will Wade’s contract at its Friday meeting, the LSU Board of Supervisors will first take up several significant capital projects.
Among them is a request from LSU to lease land at the Innovation Park for the construction and schematic design of the Emerge School for Autism, which has been operating out of two classrooms at the Emerge Center headquarters on Innovation Park Drive since opening in August. LSU is also asking for an additional 28 parking spaces to be located on the campus.
Renderings by Coleman Partners Architects show the proposed 6,500-square-foot building—which would be adjacent to the existing Emerge Center facility—would include six classrooms, six quiet rooms, a therapy room and several multi-purpose and office rooms.
Under the terms of a revised agreement, the Baton Rouge Speech and Hearing Foundation, which opened the Emerge Center, will pay the board an annual rental fee of $5,062.46 for the portion of land on which the new charter school will be located.
Meanwhile, the board will also decide whether to move forward with plans for the third phase of the Greenhouse District, a large-scale LSU student housing revitalization effort that also included the completed Nicholson Gateway project and the ongoing replacement housing project.
Unlike original plans, which included the demolition of five existing, older residence halls on campus—Acadian Hall Extension, Broussard, Herget, McVoy and Miller—the board agenda notes that LSU has set higher targets for enrollment growth and will need the additional capacity to house incoming students.
The estimated $83 million Greenhouse District phase would involve the construction of two, first-year student housing halls with a total of 881 beds, located on the site formerly occupied by the AgCenter greenhouses. In a joint venture, project advisors Brailsford & Dunlavey and CSRS will develop the project through master developer RISE: A Real Estate Company, which also planned Nicholson Gateway.
Additionally, Kappa Kappa Gamma is asking the board to OK the construction of a new $9.7 million sorority house. Check out the rest of the agenda here.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated since its original publication to reflect that Brailsford and Dunlavey and CSRC are the project advisors, not master developers, on the Greenhouse District project. Daily Report regrets the error.
