Building and renovation work rolls on at ECU

With a $29 million renovation completed, Legacy Hall opened last week to 450 students. And lessons learned during its yearlong renovation are making their way to nearby Jones Hall, which crews are busy remaking.

“There are always surprises,” said Gina Shoemaker, director of engineering and architectural services at ECU. “Nothing is ever exactly the way you assume it’s going to be when you start doing a renovation. The contractor was able to overcome all of them. Everything we learned at Legacy we put toward Jones. That’s how we structured it, that we would learn a whole lot. They’re not identical buildings, but they’re very similar.”

After more than a year of renovations Legacy Hall welcomed 450 students during move-in last week. (ECU photo by Steven Mantilla)

For example, she said, to change the bathrooms in Legacy from a single large, hall bathroom to smaller pod-type bathrooms required moving plumbing and drilling holes in rebar-reinforced floors. ECU and the contractor came up with an alternative reinforcement method to maintain the floors’ strength.

From below ground to rooftops, construction is a constant at ECU.

Speight, home of the College of Education, is getting all windows replaced and modifications to the front entrance during fall semester.

“It will help insulation, keep it warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer,” said Shoemaker. “The modifications to the front entrance are more of an architectural thing. For the education program at ECU to be so prominent, Speight doesn’t have a prominent presence on campus, so this will help Speight become more of a destination than just a building.”

Work on the Whichard Building should finish before winter break. Installing the new elevator proved challenging, Shoemaker said.

“When we went to put in the foundation for the elevator, we found the soil there is really bad,” she said. “So we had to do some structural changes to the elevator’s foundation design to support it.”

Once complete, the dean’s office for the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures will move in.

The $35 million renovations to the south tower of the Howell Science Complex, are finished. The updates include new teaching space and research labs.

Design work is proceeding on Howell North. Work on that building, along with replacing the adjacent greenhouse, should begin in December and last until July 2028, Shoemaker said.

At nearly 96,000 square feet, the Howell Science Complex was built in 1969 at a cost of $3.5 million.

Design work for the third phase of renovations to Mendenhall, ECU’s former student center, is beginning. That work will involve renovating first-floor restrooms and creating space for the registrar’s office on the second floor. The first two phases added new space for graduate and undergraduate admissions, and ECU’s student media groups to the garden level and new stairwells.

Health Sciences Campus

Students, faculty and others recently ‘topped out” the new $265 million Brody Center for Medical Education on the Health Sciences Campus, and other projects are also progressing. The building, paid for with state funds, should be ready next year.

However, the parking deck that will serve the new building will open in October and will be available to ECU employees and patients.

A short distance away, a new medical examiner facility is under construction on B’s Barbecue Road. This $44.2 million, 25,000-square-foot state-funded facility will be larger and include spaces for law enforcement and for staff to meet with families. It should be done by next August and will replace a cramped, outdated facility inside ECU Health Medical Center.

Grady-White Boats Athletic Campus

Construction on the Isley Indoor Performance Center and Wornam Family Field should finish in November after a year-plus of work. The 85,000-square-foot, $24.5 million facility is funded by the Pirate Club through donations.

“Everybody thinks about indoors as avoiding the storms or avoiding the weather. But for us … next fall camp, or in summer, I see it avoiding the heat and practicing flexible times,” head football coach Blake Harrell said in an Aug. 10 news conference. “Like right now, we have no other choice but to practice in the morning. So the guys will go get 24-hour recoveries. If you figure you had an indoor, maybe you want to do an afternoon practice. Maybe you could get a 36-hour rest time or a 30-hour rest time and give the guys just a little bit more recovery.”

Nearby, work on Clark-LeClair Stadium to upgrade seating and expand coaches’ offices, locker rooms and training rooms should wrap up in January. Private donations are funding the work, budgeted at $10.3 million

Also, repairs are being made to the baseball stadium parking lot.

Up N.C. 43 North, work is continuing on a new building and other upgrades for the men’s and women’s golf teams, funded by private donations, including from Harold Varner ’12, the professional golfer whose family’s name is on the practice facility. The 3,800-square-foot building will house locker rooms, hitting bays, offices and a players lounge. It should be ready in November. Previous upgrades improved the driving range and rebuilt the practice greens and putting greens on the golf course.

Other campus projects include the following:

• Window replacement and exterior repairs to the Jenkins Fine Arts Center, which will continue into the fall semester
• Roof replacement on the Student Health Center, Old Cafeteria Building and Fletcher Residence Hall
• Steam infrastructure repairs around Fletcher, the Old Cafeteria Building and the Bate Building
• Work on a new Starbucks in Joyner Library
• Design work for serving areas at West End Dining, with construction set to start in the summer of 2028
• Upgrades to restrooms and fire alarms in Brewster
• At the Blount Fields complex on Charles Boulevard, converting one field to synthetic turf for year-round use and upgrading irrigation and turfgrass on other fields
• Upgrading elevators in the Warren Life Sciences Building

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