A&M-Fort Worth Nearly Doubles Construction Budget

The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents recently announced its decision to practically double the construction budget of Phase One of the Texas A&M-Fort Worth research campus, from $85 million to $150 million, according to a university news release.

The increased budget is due to demands and requests for space in the Law & Education building, which will stand nine stories and measure in at 225,000 square feet. The facility will play home to programs in law, engineering, health sciences, business, and others, the news release reports.

“There is so much opportunity for the Texas A&M System to serve Fort Worth, Tarrant County, and all of North Texas, we had to go bigger and taller in the first building,” said Chancellor John Sharp.

The Law & Education Building will be the first of a three-building complex on four city blocks. The other two structures will consist of public-private sector partnerships built with city-issued bonds and funded by lease payments from both the Texas A&M System and private-sector companies. The campus will form a “hub of collaboration between key Fort Worth industries and top research, education and workforce training assets of the Texas A&M System,” the news release reports.

The Texas A&M University School of Law and its 1,200 students will take up about half of the building. The Regents also authorized $15 million of the $150-million budget toward design and pre-construction services. The Board could be requested to give the final authorization for the project’s groundbreaking by May 2023, according to the news release.

About the Author

Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • Houston-Area High School Breaks Ground on 117,000SF Multi-Use Facility

    North Shore Senior High School, part of Galena Park ISD in Houston, Texas, recently broke ground on a new multi-use facility for student extracurriculars, according to a news release. The North Shore Multi-Use Facility will include dedicated practice and training space for the school’s athletics and fine arts programs.

  • 144-Year-Old High-School Campus Debuts New Academic Facility

    San Diego High School (SDHS) in San Diego, Calif., recently held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new student services and classroom building; the project is part of a larger SDHS Whole Site Modernization project that began in 2022.

  • Photo credit: Elkus Manfredi Architects

    University of Virginia Selects Design-Build Team for New Residential Complex

    The University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va., recently announced that it has selected a design-build team for a new upper-class residential development on campus, according to a news release. Capstone Development Partners—in partnership with Elkus Manfredi Architects and the Hoar Construction/Hourigan construction team—will move forward with the three-building, 310,000-square-foot housing facility.

  • How a Portable Sink Helped an Art Classroom Run More Smoothly

    Classroom design decisions can have outsized effects on instructional time and safety at schools juggling mismatched infrastructure, strict budgets, and crowded schedules — particularly in the arts. Between spilled paint and dirty brushes, art classes run smoother with a sink in the studio. But many schools don’t have a sink in every art classroom.