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Time to replace New Cabell Hall, Board of Visitors says
Plan would recreate humanities area at south end of Lawn

Staff Report

New Cabell Hall will be demolished and replaced with a new structure under a plan
adopted Oct. 18 by the Board of Visitors’ Buildings and Grounds Committee.

Rebecca Arrington

The Board of Visitors approved a plan last week to raze New Cabell Hall (above and right), built 50 years ago to accommodate the post-World War II boom in students, and replace it with a 160,000-square-foot new building with classroom and office space.

Under the proposed plan, one architectural firm will be hired to design both the replacement for New Cabell Hall and a new College of Arts & Sciences building, to be constructed in the B-1 parking lot. A 400- to 500-car parking garage will be included in the project, as well as renovations to Cocke and Rouss halls.

The estimated cost is $126.7 million, of which $61.1 million is slated to come from private funding, $61.1 million from a combination of University and state money, and $4.5 million from U.Va.’s Department of Parking and Transportation. The University’s share will be determined after the state decides its contribution, said Colette Sheehy, vice president for management and budget.

The state will probably view the replacement of New Cabell Hall the same as a renovation, since the University is replacing one 160,000-square-foot building with another, Sheehy said.

The timetable adopted by the board calls for the parking garage to be built by December 2003, the new Arts & Sciences building by December 2004, the completion of Cocke and Rouss renovations by 2005 and completion of New Cabell Hall’s replacement by 2006. Classes would be moved from New Cabell Hall to the new building across Jefferson Park Avenue while the replacement building is being constructed.

Under the resolution adopted by the board, Rector John P. Ackerly will appoint a steering committee drawn from the Board of Visitors, the College Foundation and the administration to oversee the project.

University Architect Samuel A. “Pete” Anderson III applauded the board’s actions, saying that it showed board members are thinking of the south end of the Lawn as a unified entity. It is important that the two new buildings be considered together. “It’s our back door,” Anderson said.

“This is the most important step the University has taken in my time,” he said. New Cabell Hall opened in 1951 — the same year Anderson started school here.

Students on Unocal investments

A presentation by Abby Fifer, the Student Council president, and Andrew Price, president of the Free Burma Coalition, loomed as a possibly controversial entry on the Board of Visitors’ agenda Oct. 19. For months, the student groups had lobbied the board and University administration, urging the University to divest its financial stake in Unocal, an oil company whose business practices in Burma are under fire from many human rights groups.

On Oct. 12, the University announced that it had sold its shares of Unocal stock, and though the previously scheduled appearance by Fifer and Price remained on the agenda, it ended up being far more cordial than confrontational.

Fifer opened with a “goodwill gesture,” passing around a cup full of Student Council pens. She gave a thorough-but-quick rundown of Student Council activities, then took up the Unocal matter. Fifer and Price asked the board to consider adopting an ethical investment policy, perhaps to include an advisory panel of students, faculty and administrators. They suggested that the board establish a code of conduct for the University’s outside investment firms, and said that if the University chose not to divest its interests in companies engaging in ethically questionable practices, it could support shareholder resolutions that addressed the conduct. Full story.