UNCG, A&T to start Gateway campus

N.C. A&T University and UNC-Greensboro are ready to break ground on the South Campus of their joint Gateway University Research Park, and are planning an official ceremony for the occasion May 16.

Site improvements and the construction to follow are getting started about 90 days behind schedule for a few reasons, according to John Merrill, the park's executive director. Such a major construction project, which is part of a $250 million master plan that is being coordinated jointly between two public universities and the state, has required careful planning, he said.

The project also ran into objections from neighbors of the 75-acre property off East Lee Street near I-40, a delay for which Merrill said he is to blame.

"It was a huge blunder on our part not to bring them in sooner," Merrill said of the neighbors who were concerned about the traffic and noise impact of the campus. He said he has apologized to those neighbors and invited their representatives to join an advisory committee, which is working on new designs for a buffer zone at the edge of the property.

A general contractor for the project has been selected, but Merrill said the information was not ready to be released.

The delay is not a concern to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which plans to make the Greensboro offices of its Natural Resources Conservation Service the first tenant of the park. Chief Arlen Lancaster said that office, which is currently in rented space near Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital and supports field staff and inventories natural resources throughout the region, will be greatly enhanced after it moves.

"The partnership we have had with A&T has been tremendous, and anything we can do to work more closely with them, we want to do," Lancaster said.

Merrill said the building that will house the USDA should be ready in about 12 months. Funding for the site work has already been secured from the state, he said, and bank financing for the first building should be secured soon. The cost of that building has been estimated at around $7.5 million.

The South Campus is also the site of UNCG and N.C. A&T's proposed Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, but funding for that project is still working its way through the budget process. House budget writers have recommended $4 million in initial funding.

The master plan for the Gateway research park calls for $250 million to be spent over the next 20 years to develop both the South Campus and the North Campus on the former site of the N.C. School for the Deaf on Summit Ave. That plan envisions a total of 26 buildings with about 1 million square feet of space, with total employment of around 2,000 people.