Increase in student body sees need for campus expansion

The Twinsburg satellite of Kent State’s Geauga Campus may be seeing a new academic building due to the growing student body there.

The university is considering a 15-acre vacant plot of land to build a new 42,000-square-foot building. However, they are in the final negotiations stage, said Emily Vincent, university media relations director.

“Enrollment there has really been growing,” Vincent said, “so the current Academic Center cannot really serve the students.”

An enrollment projection for the Twinsburg Academic Center has predicted enrollment would increase from 700 to 1,200 by 2015. As a result, the current 29,000-square-foot, 89-year-old building may no longer be enough.

John Granny, business services administrator at the Geauga Regional Campus, said the new building would support graduate studies and increase the number of classrooms and parking. The classrooms would have state-of-the-art technology and equipment.

Granny stressed that the new academic center would not become its own branch campus of Kent State. The Geauga campus has leased space in a building called the Old School in Twinsburg since 1996, he said. They are simply moving to a different building.

Granny said the university hopes the center will be open “sometime in 2012,” though they are shooting for the fall semester of that year.

A location at the intersection of state Route 91 and Interstate 480 is at “the top of their list,” Granny said, but they researched several other sites as well. He said this location is just a quarter-mile from the Old School.

“It’s right off the highway,” Granny said, “so people can come in right from work or wherever they’re coming from. It’s very convenient.”

The university is working out a deal with real estate development company Fairmount Properties of Cleveland on a $750,000 per year lease to own, he said.

“They’re going to need to bring it to the Board of Trustees,” Vincent said, “and their next meeting’s not until September.”

Contact administration reporter Nick Glunt at [email protected].