| Agency Description The proposed 209,500 gross square foot Arts and Innovation Academic Building will be located on the southeast corner of Broad and Belvidere
Streets, consolidating arts and innovation programs in a single location. It will be home to new hybrid classroom-laboratories, interdisciplinary
performance and makerspaces, and creative incubators for rapidly growing partnerships across arts, business, medicine and engineering. The
facility must be highly flexible with the ability to rapidly reconfigure space on a regular basis. The activities in this building will range from
opera to quantum computing; integrating the disciplines of engineering, cinema, theater, immersive media technology, gaming and the creation
of new knowledge.
Along with the Institute for Contemporary Arts Markel Center, the building will anchor the east side of the Monroe Park Campus and act as a
"front door," highlighting the university's status as a premier arts institution and providing a link to the Downtown Richmond Arts District. |
| Justification Positioned just steps away from Fortune 500 companies, a new Arts and Innovation Academic Building will provide a launch pad for critical
digital and creative economy initiatives both on campus and in the city, and will prepare students for a world of emerging creative industries.
At an institutional level, the new facility supports VCU’s Quest 2025: Together we Transform strategic plan goals for national prominence as
well as the ONE VCU Master Plan’s guiding principles -- student success, program synergies, placemaking, and unifying the campus.
Geography and quality of research, laboratory and classroom space are currently challenges for VCU’s arts and innovation programs, with 17
departments and programs spread across 20 campus buildings. The new space will consolidate many of the existing arts and innovation
programs in a single location, allowing VCU to redeploy those sites for other purposes.
Unlike any other facility on campus, this building will integrate multiple disciplines in a similar manner to the way the university's DaVinci
program works now. Focusing on a single project or objective, teams from various areas of expertise will collaborate on projects, allowing
academic models to simulate the commercial media and product development experience. This building will enable the university to maintain
its leadership position in arts education, innovation and media while also integrating other academic disciplines.
Alternatives Considered
(1) Do Nothing. Doing nothing would not be in alignment with the strategic plan focus on national prominence and would do nothing the knit the
campus into the city. (2) Renovate existing space. There is no space which VCU owns that can be renovated to meet the programmatic
aspirations of this project. (3) Lease space. Space of this type and capacity is not available for lease in close proximity to the campus. (4)
Build New. This is the recommended option since it meets the university's strategic plan and master plan goals and guiding principles.
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