HNN has acquired several CG graphic images of Marshall University’s new campus development, illustrating plans for the “Innovation District” just east of Hal Greer Blvd. between Third and Fifth Avenue.
Marshall’s lead developer, Fairmount Properties, distributed the images during a tour led by President Brad D. Smith for the WV Legislature’s Education Committee on Monday.
The new proposals imagine a large Cyber Security Center building on the northwest corner of Fourth Avenue & Hal Greer, an Advanced Manufacturing Center on 15th Street, a new Visual Arts Center, an large Innovation Hub, various new ground level retail spaces, residential townhouses, offices, public campus areas and a new parking garage.
The ambitious new campus is budgeted at well over $300 million dollars — and it dwarfs the imposing Brad D. Smith business center now under construction at the old Uptown Hotel site on 14th Street and Fourth Avenue.
The proposed eastern campus, if executed, would be on a magnitude comparable to the new Marshall Science & Engineering facilities North of Fifth Avenue and Pullman Square combined. Historic homes along Fifth Avenue are slated for demolition and the Buddy’s BBQ, Calamity Cafe, Pho & Truckin’ Cheesy restaurant area would be radically transformed, according to the developer’s graphics.
Since 1998 Fairmount Properties has taken on about 30 large-scale mixed
use campus developments, including ones in Kent, Ohio and Rochester, NY. Although the graphic booklet distributed Monday claims, “Certainty of Execution — when Fairmount Properties is hired by an institutional partner and it’s host city to execute a mission driven initiative it gets to the finish line 100% of the time,” in fact, an ambitious plan set in motion at Northern Kentucky University near Cincinnati is stalled and mired in expensive and hostile litigation.
Photos: Fairmount Properties’ rendering of planned Marshall Innovation District (facing West between 3rd & 5th Avenue – the red triangle shape is on the southwest lawn of Old Main), the planned Institute for Cyber Security, the Advanced Manufacturing Center & Visual Arts Center. Additional photo by D.S. Clark: University President Brad D. Smith leads WV Senate & House members’ tour of Business School construction site, 5/8/23