Walking up Science Drive these days, it's difficult to find the once-brazen sign on the corner of Towerview Road reading "school of law." Instead, one of nearly a dozen white pickup trucks blocks the signifier, the "C.C. Woods Construction Company" emblem on its passenger-side door carving its own space this summer in the dusty makeshift loading zone.
The law school is still plenty recognizable, even with the buzzing of power saws from freshly-gutted classrooms drowning out any buzz of America's future lawyers and with the men bustling around in white hard hats outnumbering any lingering professors--but only until the oft-maligned building begins its facelift in earnest next week.
"It looks a little bit like a junior high school," Dean of the School of Law Katharine Bartlett said of the facility's current red-brick façade, all of which will be stripped away and replaced with "Duke Brick," the same casing that adorns Keohane Quadrangle.
The exterior makeover is only half of the first phase in the law school's three-part, $20-million renovation, which broke ground within hours of the year's last final exam April 30. The demolition and rebuilding of the school's two primary lecture halls comprise the other part of Phase I.
Rooms 3037 and 3041, mainstays of the building but by no means visual or technological favorites of students or administrators, are already being reconstructed ahead of schedule after surveyors found "a lot of asbestos, a lot more than they thought," contractors said.
Starting Monday or Tuesday construction teams will work simultaneously on the classrooms and on stripping the bands of dirty red brick from the law school's exterior, along with replacing its entrance doors and windows. Phase I will cost an estimated $3.5 million and should be completed in time for the opening of the 2004-2005 academic year, said professor Tom Metzloff, chair of the school's Planning and Building Committee.
"It is simply a necessity; we need all our classrooms," he wrote in an e-mail. "It is also just a great time to do the work. [Workers] can make all the noise they want and our community is okay with that. They have the run of the place."
Phase II of the renovation project consists of a 25,000-square-foot addition and tower extending toward the Fuqua School of Business that will house student journals, legal clinics and much of the law school faculty, which has grown by more than 10 positions in the past five years. Administrators have already secured $6 million for the entire effort and plan to borrow money in conjunction with continued fundraising.
While contractors are facing an August 2005 deadline and minor permit snags for the second phase of the construction, a third part is still in the planning stages for the creation of an indoor atrium in the back of the building, which Metzloff said would function similarly to the futuristic Fox Student Center at Fuqua.
The entire project will alleviate a space crunch that has frustrated law school students and officials alike.
"We've renovated all the broom closets we could find," Bartlett said.
Kelly Rohrs contributed to this story.
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