New GSU Law School to be ‘Showplace’ on Key Downtown Block

April 15,2013

Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, April 12, 2013

Thanks to a $5 million grant from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, Georgia State University now has raised enough money to build a new College of Law building on a key downtown site that is currently a surface parking lot.

The $82.5 million project, to be located just off Peachtree Street just south of the Georgia-Pacific Center tower, will position Georgia State’s professional schools next to downtown’s core business district. Eventually, the J. Mack Robinson College of Business also is planned to go on the same block.

“It really puts the law school in a showplace building at a showplace location,” said Mark Becker, president of Georgia State University.

Gov. Nathan Deal’s budget included $58.8 million in bonds for GSU’s new law school building, which was a priority for the Georgia Board of Regents.

It was passed by the Georgia General Assembly, and it currently is awaiting the governor’s signature.

“The Woodruff Foundation gift put us over the top,” Becker said. “We have got all the funding we need to build this building.”

Not only is the development expected to provide a boost for Georgia State and its law school, but also for that section of downtown.

Although it is located only one block east of Peachtree and one block north of Woodruff Park, it has been underdeveloped for years. Currently, it is just surface parking lots and a low-rise garage, a block that could be described as a “missing tooth” in downtown. Formerly, the restaurant Mumbo Jumbo was located on that block.

“It’s an under-utilized strategic parcel that ties into the framework of Georgia State’s campus and downtown,” said A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress. “It’s a bridge block that will be only 100 feet from the Atlanta Streetcar.”

In fact, the Atlanta Streetcar, which will connect Centennial Olympic Park with the King Center on Auburn Avenue, will travel through the heart of Georgia State’s campus.

Robinson added that the new building is also “significant because the law school needs a modern state-of-the-art facility.”

GSU’s College of Law, founded in 1982, has been housed in the Urban Life building on Piedmont Avenue at Decatur Street since its inception.

“We are literally out of space,” said Steven Kaminshine, dean of Georgia State’s College of Law. “We can’t add one more faculty member. It’s time for a school with our trajectory to have a building that is commensurate with our reputation.”

The building, designed by the national firm of SmithGroup and the Atlanta firm Stevens & Wilkinson, will have all the latest amenities for a law school — a 230-seat formal moot courtroom, a law library of the future, faculty offices embedded on the teaching floors, collaborative learning spaces and legal clinics for the underserved.