“We’re making a lot of progress on steps needed for the realization of a new facility,” Baynes said during his spring semester, “Discussion with the Dean.” "We signed a contract with a program consultant in December who has been helping us with the design, schematics, and how things fit together.
“We’re at the same time trying to raise money. The goal is to raise $10 million by the end of the year and we’re at $5 million now. We hope to show the state legislature that this is like a ‘down payment,’ and that our alums and friends are very excited about the possibility of a new building.”
For inspiration for the new building, Baynes said he and his staff have visited several sites featured on the bestchoiceschools.com list of the 50 most impressive law school buildings in the world, including the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, and the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. Baynes also will visit New York to tour the Fordham University School of Law, New York Law School, and the New York University School of Law.
Interesting that the two schools that he specifically mentioned having toured, San Diego State and Arizona State and is yet to tour buildings at Fordham and NYU, are all located in downtown urban areas not on their college campuses. I have no dog in this hunt (not a lawyer) but I do think it would increase the law college’s prestige to be located downtown, especially if they could build a facility with some wow element. Any other opinions? This would also clear out more room for future development on campus.
My reasoning is somewhat based on the experience of a friend who went to Bates after graduating from Trinity U. He told me that in his two years at Bates, he not once walked across the street onto the campus.
If being downtown increased a law school’s prestige, then South Texas wouldn’t still be ranked in the Bottom 10%, and would have no need to steal our name and trademarks in order to compete, as they attempted to do.
South Texas is proof that being located downtown IN NO WAY will increase a law school’s prestige.
The same goes for Golden Gate Law School in San Francisco, etc.
Keep the building on campus, and as I said, make it SECOND TO NONE!!!
Yale, Harvard, and Stanford, arguably the top three most prestigious law schools, all have buildings ON CAMPUS.
The master plan for the campus shows that the Law school is staying on campus. I have not seen anything saying otherwise. They are supposed to build new expansion wings that connect to the current building.
The Law Center is in the beginning phase of the campaign, and has raised more than half of its 2018 goal of $10 million to go toward a new building. The second phase will be to advocate for state funding from the Texas Legislature. The proposed site would be in the space that is currently parking lot 19B directly south of the current Law Center building.
I wonder what they will do with the existing UHLC building across the street.
I mean, I assume that they’ll tear it down, but what would go in that spot?
One good thing. It appears that this new building will be completely above ground. We all know what happened to our underground law library during a flood!
They mentioned that 54% of the old law center is below ground. I would tear it down and make a below ground level park/plaza area with trees, benches and a pond or water fall were students could congregate, study, read or just enjoy the outdoors. That below ground level park could also double as a retention pond if heavy flooding occurs again.
The school will probably make a parking lot out of it.
It’s hard to tell because of the angle but there is a possibility the new building is connected to the old law center on the back end. I can’t tell for sure. The old building is more spread out then the new one which is more of a tower, but when comparing them together, the footprint of the new building does not look much bigger than the current law center. I’d be interested to know how much more square feet the new building is.
