The construction of the $60 million Business Education Complex is currently ahead of schedule and expected to be complete in December 2011.The BEC will serve as a mecca for the E.J. Ourso College of Business, housing all the required core classes for the college.”Right now, our students take classes in maybe 10 different buildings on campus, so this will get us closer together as a college,” said Timothy Rodrigue, assistant director of Alumni and External Relations for the College of Business. “Until this complex is opened, LSU remains one of very few, if not the only, major institutions in the United States that doesn’t have its own separate housing for a college of business.”The complex will contain a four-story glass rotunda containing a commons area, two banks of pavilions housing both undergraduate and graduate classrooms and a separate structure featuring a 300-seat auditorium.Amenities for the complex include numerous laboratories, dining options, a patio and its own quadrangle.Once the complex is completed, it will serve as the new home of the Business College. The College of Engineering will take over Patrick F. Taylor Hall, Rodrigue said.The new 156,000-square-foot complex is one of the largest construction projects the University has ever seen, said Emmett David, director of Facility Development.”The original design for the Business Education Complex as it stands now was bigger in scope, but due to budgetary reasons it was cut down,” Rodrigue said. FUNDINGThe construction, which began in March, is funded by a public-private partnership. The state agreed to supply $30 million to match the school’s collection of $30 million in private funds.Currently, the school is $8 million shy of its target, according to Karen Deville, senior director of advancement for the College of Business.”It’s a tough environment with the economy the way it is,” she said.Deville said the school has been collecting donations since 1998, and more than 100 donors have contributed upward of $1,000. The leading gift, contributed by RoyOMartin, a Louisiana lumber company, is $3 million.”A lot of them are business school alumni, while some have no connection to LSU whatsoever outside of wanting to support the flagship university of the state and especially the College of Business,” Rodrigue said.He said fundraising will be an ongoing process.”It’s definitely a concern in that we do need and want to raise the money,” he said. “They’re not going to start tearing down the complex anytime soon — we aren’t worried about that.”Rodrigue said he is confident the Business College can raise the remaining money.”Once people see the physical signs of the complex, more interest will be generated in people wanting to give,” he said.But the remaining $8 million only covers the cost of construction. A separate fund will be established to cover the cost of furnishing the complex. “That’s a separate topic,” Rodrigue said. “Fundraising isn’t going to stop once the complex is built.”No deadline to raise the remaining $8 million is in place, Rodrigue said.CONSTRUCTION STATUSThe Lemoine Company, which constructed both the Cox Communications Academic Center for Student Athletes and the LSU Museum of Art, had the winning construction bid of $40 million.”It’s a fairly large project for us,” said Bryan O’Connor, assistant project manager. “It seems challenging, and it’s something we wanted to be a part of.”O’Connor said complete steel structures for two of the four main buildings are nearly finished and  concrete is poured for both the auditorium and the undergraduate pavilion.”We’ve been planning this for about 12 years now,” Rodrigue said. “So to finally see it come to fruition creates a lot of excitement.”People interested in monitoring the progress of the construction can go to the College of Business website, which has a live webcam of the construction site.”We definitely want people to see our progress,” Rodrigue said. “We want to be as transparent as possible and let them know what’s going on at the college.”FUTURE OF THE COLLEGERodrigue said the complex will create new opportunities for the school.”Our main focus with this is it’s not just about the complex,” Rodrigue said. “It’s about what the complex will allow — the programs it will allow our students to take part in and projects our faculty will be able to provide for our students.”Rodrigue said one of the growth initiatives of the College of Business is globalization, which is why the school partnered in 2009 with the University of São Paulo in Brazil.”This allows us to bring in more faculty, do better exchanges with other countries that our students are going to have to ultimately work with when they start their career,” Rodrigue said. “For us to be able to do that, we have to be able to communicate with people not only in the state but outside the state, as well.”
 
 
 
____Contact Sarah Eddington at [email protected]