MORGANTOWN – WVU expects to have Field Hall – the former business and economics school building – open for fall semester in August.
“Construction is progressing quickly and on schedule, so we’re very happy about that,” said Scott Owen, construction manager, WVU Design and Construction. Work is about 40% done.
The business school moved into the new Reynolds Hall in late summer 2022 – they held the grand opening in August – and WVU has been working to repurpose the former home.
They’re working with a budget of $3.4 million. It’s been reported the budget was cut from $7 million but Owen said it wasn’t acutually reduced. He was told, “Here’s how much money you have, what can you do with it? They bid it out, but that came in over the budget they gave him.
“We had to do some level of reassessment to get it back to within the budget they gave me.”
The new scope of work includes a refresh of all interior finishes – paint, floor coverings; modernizing the elevator; upgrading audio-visual technology in the classrooms; a new fire alarm system and other life safety upgrades; building security – exterior card access; wireless accessibility; plumbing repairs; new furniture.
He described some of the cost-saving measures they took in readying the four-story building for new life.
They learned they were able to reuse some of the existing furniture. “We did a very thorough review of that and saved some money there.”
They found that some of the programs they intended to put in there didn’t need to go in. The first floor doesn’t need renovation at this time and neither do some of the classrooms.
Programs that will be moving in are under the Eberly College: social work, sociology, women and gender studies, communication studies, the WVU Advance Center aimed at “disrupting institutional inequities” through institutional transformation.
The building’s name, Field Hall, he said, arises from it sitting on the site of the former Mountaineer Field.
Email: dbeard@dominionpost.com
