press release

Ground broken for $30 million UVa-Wise Convocation Center

By Steve Igo

Published: July 1, 2009

WISE — In 24 months, a significant economic asset for Southwest Virginia will be the site of a grand opening ceremony. But on Wednesday the groundbreaking bash for an asset yet to be built was plenty of reason for grins and congratulations for all concerned.

Dignitaries — particularly Southwest Virginia’s legislative delegation — gathered at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise to hail the official start of construction of the college’s Convocation Center, a facility to be unmatched in the region for indoor athletic events, concerts and conventions.

The $30 million center will seat 3,000 for sporting events such as basketball and volleyball and 4,000 for concerts or convocation activities.

Besides the home site of the college’s men’s and women’s basketball games and women’s volleyball, UVa-Wise Chancellor David J. Prior said lobbying is already under way to offer the facility as a site for regional and state high school tournaments.

“We’re looking forward to all sorts of programming” at a facility Prior said “will be the largest event center in Southwest Virginia.”

State Sen. William Wampler Jr., R-Bristol, said the facility will be a “critical part of the economic engine of Southwest Virginia” and one that “I thought, truly, I would never see.”

But once completed, Wampler said the Convocation Center will be the “crowning jewel” not just for the college but as an economic asset for the region.

Southwest Virginia’s legislators teamed up to make sure the center remained in a state bond package approved by the General Assembly in 2007 for college and university projects across the commonwealth.

By all accounts the task to keep the project in the overall legislation required tireless efforts by Southwest Virginia legislators. UVa-Wise Board Chairman Jim Gott said only the legislators “know the horse trading that went on,” but the region owes its legislative delegation a great deal of thanks.

University of Virginia Board of Visitors member Don Pippin read a message from UVA President John Casteen praising the new facility at UVA’s only branch campus. Casteen said UVa-Wise is becoming “an essential piece of Southwest Virginia’s infrastructure” that will soon have “a great new Convocation Center, the gathering place for all of Southwest Virginia. The name says it all. It is the place to come together.”

Delegate Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City, spearheaded the financing legislation in Richmond and called Wednesday “a day we have been working toward for quite some time. This is going to be the centerpiece for the region.”

Delegate Bud Phillips, D-Clintwood, said Virginia had long considered Southwest Virginia a “frontier” unworthy of consideration for such projects, but Wednesday marks the “new frontier” for opportunities across the region in areas such as economic growth, technology, education and quality of life.

VMDO Architects was founded in 1976 and is the youngest firm to receive the T. David Fitz-Gibbon Virginia Architecture Award, the most prestigious honor given by the Virginia Society of American Institute of Architects.

For further information, interview, and photography opportunities in reference to this project and VMDO Architects, please contact William Bishop at 434.296.5684, email at bishop@vmdo.com.