Carolina Alumni Review - November/December 2008

maximum capacity for lunch, the other for dinner.

The two steam plants and five chiller plants that power the campus are good through the current master plan; any revisions to that density would necessitate more energy sources.

Campus recreation reached an ominous milestone a year and a half ago when it had to start pushing some teams to waiting lists for lack of space. “We’re already behind the eight ball, particularly in outside space,” said campus recreation Director Marty Pomerantz.

The Student Health Service is overcrowded, said Peggy Jablonski, vice chancellor for student affairs. She’s seeking a bigger building already. Another 3,000 students, she said, is “going to push us over the edge.”

A decade-old study of square footage needs per enrollment is in the dustbin now. “We blew past those projections,” said Anna Wu, director of facilities planning. Wu is upbeat about “real expansion space” represented by two new science buildings and three others under construction, plus a new music building. But, she added, “I think what we’re going to find is we’ll grow right into it.”

A study by the higher education planning firm Paulien & Associates found that the current approximately 5. 2 million square feet of assignable space (that usable for living, working and learning) is 1. 7 million short of what’s needed now. By 2017, the deficit would grow to 2. 5 million square feet if UNC adds only the some 700,000 square feet currently approved. The biggest needs are in research labs and

office space.

UNC has asked the N.C. General Assembly for $1.7 billion for buildings from the current biennial budget, including, for instance, a building for psychology and related sciences where the Naval Armory now stands.

Housing officials say they can handle student demand up to the 33,000 enrollment projection. New South Campus dorms built in the past 10 years raised the campus capacity 27 percent, to 8,680 from 6,800. In addition, the UNC at Chapel Hill Foundation Inc. is buying the 1,300- bed Granville Towers.

The need for research labs is another matter. Research on the campus is projected to grow 50 percent over the next decade.

“The demand for space far exceeds the space we have,” said Tony Waldrop ’ 74, vice chancellor for research and economic development, who was celebrating another 11 percent increase in National Institutes of Health funding. Already, seven or eight research centers and institutes are in leased space off campus, not ideally configured for their work.

And research space is expensive — about $750 a square foot compared with about $350 for regular classroom space.

Bruce Carney headed a space-needs study in the College of Arts and Sciences for four years before becoming the college’s interim dean last summer. He thinks about anthropology students three to a desk, a crowded top-five sociology department that brings in a lot of grant money, and the need to teach more languages.