Shop Talk: A Performing-Arts Complex in Northridge, Plus 2 New Campuses

The new performing-arts center will have a glass wall overlooking the Northridge campus. (HGA image)

Performance gets a new home in Northridge: Construction started early this month on a big, glassy performing-arts center at California State University at Northridge. The 163,000-square-foot complex will house a 1,700-seat concert hall, a 250-seat black-box theater, support spaces, classrooms, a 150-seat lecture hall, and facilities for the university’s public-radio station, KCSN. It was designed by HGA Architects and Engineers, and is expect to cost $125-million, $98-million of which is for the building itself. But an article in the student newspaper, the Daily Sundial, says the university still needs to raise about $30-million for the project.

Satellite surprise in North Carolina: An item in the budget submitted to the North Carolina legislature by Gov. Mike Easley took a number of people by surprise. The governor proposed spending $14.5-million on a project that many people thought had fizzled—a University of North Carolina satellite campus in Rocky Mount. The one-building campus is to be the first of three new satellite university facilities planned for the state, according to the Rocky Mount Telegram.

And a campus countdown in San Antonio: Meanwhile, the Texas A&M University system is putting together plans for a new campus in San Antonio, where Texas A&M University at Kingsville now operates a branch campus. According to the San Antonio Business Journal, the Texas legislature passed a measure in 2003 saying that if the branch campus reached an enrollment of 1,500, the university system could open a stand-alone San Antonio campus instead. With enrollment now at 1,021, the university is looking at a 700-acre parcel on the south side of town, and has hired Marmon Mok Architecture to prepare a development plan, with help from Sasaki Associates.