Construction under way for new performing arts building

Project will take two years to complete

Construction for the Noorda Center for the Performing Arts Building has begun. The $60million project is estimated to be completed in the spring of 2019.

Frank Young, associate vice president of facilities planning, said that the purpose of this building is not for classes, but for a performance space and is specifically for dance, theatre and music majors. According to him, UVU is one of the last of the state schools to receive a performance venue.

Last year, the building was originally planned to be 140,000 square feet, but is now expected to be 170,000 square feet and will include a black box theatre, an unadorned performance space.

The new building’s large spaces will help dancers find a new level of confidence, according to Ruth Crowder, a ballroom dance major.

“This building will give dancers a big place to perform in front of a large audience, unlike the small and cramped studio spaces we have now,” Crowder said.

102 parking spaces will be lost permanently from this project, but Young encouraged students to use the M-29 lot, which contains 468 yellow-permit parking spaces. Due to the construction, lots M-24 and part of lot M-23 will be blocked off. There will be 261 lost parking stalls on the east side of the Gunther Technology Building.

According to Young, the construction is affecting the way printing services transports mail because of the relocation of water lines and how printing services have had to use the elevator in the GT Building.

“Printing was without the use of the road for a little over a week. The road was unusable today. Layton Construction will help them with deliveries on the dirt road,” Young said.

All music faculty and some theatre have also lost their faculty annex on the southeast side of campus. Young said that they have new offices built for them on the third-level of the Sparks Automotive Building and that contractors created pathways from the GT building.

Geoff Griffin, English major and music librarian, works in the performance library located in the GT Building and said that it’s always a benefit for students of a specific major to feel like they have their own space.

“Perhaps especially in the case of students studying music and the performing arts since rehearsing lines or memorizing music in a crowded hallway is less than ideal. Having a new building means that those taking private lessons, for example, don’t have to try to run through arpeggios across from the very noisy auto-body shop,” Griffin said.

Young also said there will be an outdoor pathway with stairs that connect the east side of the Woodbury School of Business and the south side of the GT Building.