There’s a change taking place at the University of Georgia-Griffin Campus. And, while much of the change centers around the $10 million Student Learning Center that was funded by the 2005 SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax), the 33,000-square-foot classroom building is only a visual manifestation of something greater.

“It’s a historic change for the campus, university and this community,” said Gerald Arkin, assistant dean and assistant provost of the University of Georgia-Griffin campus, as he went on to explain that the campus has always been a university and because of congressional legislation was known as the Experiment Station. “A transformation is taking place. One hundred twenty years ago, people were pretty much agrarian — you grew crops that you ate or sold. It was a rural community and the research back then was to find out which crops grew best and how to grow the crops. Things have changed markedly, but we still do agriculture research and that agriculture research is under the umbrella of the Experiment Station. You also want to deliver information and that’s the Extension Service that does outreach.”

What has changed is that UGA-Griffin is now offering degreed programs of the University of Georgia on the campus.

“That’s the distinguishing difference of the past 120 years,” Arkin said. “We are now offering all three parts of a land grant institution — research, outreach and teaching.”

And, all of the teaching programs are not under the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, but also under the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, The Terry School of Business, the College of Education and the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

“You have a complete university campus,” Arkin said. “The community invested $10 million in a flagship university.”

Arkin sees the new Student Learning Center, which Physical Plant Superintendent Dale Hess says should be fundamentally complete in May and open for students in August, as the foundation for the future look of the almost 900-acre campus.

“All the future buildings will build off this theme and look,” Arkin said. “It graces the campus with the look of higher education. It looks like an academic building.”

But, getting that look of higher education has not been without its challenges and those challenges are far from over.

With only $50,000 of the $10 million designated for the Student Learning Center remaining, UGA-Griffin, for the second time, found itself in the position last week of going back to the Spalding County Board of Commissioners and requesting additional funding because of construction overruns.

“Once we got the building underway, we found out the costs of the building would be more than the $10 million,” Arkin said. “There was a period when the costs of materials and supplies skyrocketed.”

So, the approach UGA-Griffin took was to value engineer the building.

“If the building had certain construction materials that were aesthetic, you downgraded those materials so they were as functional, but not as aesthetic,” Arkin said.

While commissioners agreed to the first request, which allowed for the construction of two chimneys and a cupola, they denied Arkin’s most recent request for $250,000 for landscape and hardscape items like shrubbery, sidewalks and an irrigation system.

Now, it’s time for Plan B.

“Our strategy is to come up with an overall landscaping plan that will accentuate the building and provide for the aesthetic needs to go along with the building,” Hess said. “We’re going to come up with what we would like to have. Then we will go back budgetarily and see what we can do.”

“If you want the building to be enticing, comfortable and give the students the ambience of studiousness, you do need trees and a place to sit down,” Arkin said. “When you come out of the building, you need some benches and appropriate walkways. That look is part of the philosophy for this campus. If you go to the University of Georgia-Athens Campus, it is a beautiful campus, almost like a botanical garden. The vision for this campus is to be nothing less than that. This building is a foundation building, not only to set the theme for the architecture, but also for the landscaping. So, you really do want it to be lovely.”

But, while university officials work through landscaping challenges, they also acknowledge the huge financial investment the community has made in the university.

“It’s been a partnership between the city, county and the university,” Arkin said. “It started 120 years ago and it’s still going on. I think the community and the university moved ahead together to get this off the ground. This movement by the community has helped give it the impetus so that now the university is bringing resources to the table for better infrastructure, roadways and parking.”

Arkin says he optimistic about the future of UGA-Griffin and its partnership  with the community because a major university campus in Griffin will lead to more businesses, cultural venues, jobs and opportunities.

“That’s where we were. This is who we are and will be,” he said, pointing to an old mill across the street from the campus and then back to the architectural rendering of the Student Learning Center. “We went from growing cotton and developing the best quality seeds for cotton and textiles to now having degrees in business, degrees in education, science and food safety. We’re talking about a real transformation.”