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Thursday, August 20, 2009

Public projects moving forward

There might not be a lot of activity with commercial development right now, but the government is a buildin'! Four major public projects are beginning construction in the next couple of months:

VBC Concert Hall (Mark Smith Concert Hall): A $5 million expansion/renovation/makeover which will include new seats, a new sound system, a renovated lobby, and a new exterior. Construction Start: October. Completion: Summer 2010.

VBC Arena (Propst Arena): A $15 million renovation, including new bathrooms, concession areas (with a new cafe/bar with outdoor seating), and skyboxes. Construction start and completion are similar to the Concert Hall renovations.

Huntsville Museum of Art: A scaled-down expansion of the decade-old museum. The $7 million expansion includes new gallery space, an auditorium, and new entrances on the park and Williams Street sides of the museum. Bid date: September 24th. Construction start: November. Completion: 2011.

Lee High School: A new high school for Northeast Huntsville. The new school will be across the railroad tracks from the current one; if you've driven down Meridian lately, you've probably noticed the land has already been cleared. Bid date: October 15. Construction start: November. Completion: Opening by the 2011-2012 school year, maybe sooner.

5 comments:

Androo402 said...

I hadn't seen any plans for the inside of the arena. Just what it would look like from Monroe street.
Are there any drawings of the proposed look of the inside of the arena?

James said...

I haven't seen any renderings for the interior of the arena like the one unveiled last year of the exterior. The drawings I've seen are for the corridors circling the arena, which is where much of the renovations will take place.

Will said...

Do you have any links to the information regarding the renovations to the arena? I'm one of the co-founders of saveuahhockey.com and we'd like to run a story about the improvements, or maybe even link the information to your blog.

James said...

@Will: This blog post from last October has an exterior rendering of the arena along with some info and a link to part of a Times article that has some more specifics on the project. Let me know if I can be of any other help.

James said...

Sorry, the HTML code screwed up on that last comment. Here's the link to the original post; just copy and paste:

http://huntsvilledevelopment.blogspot.com/2008/10/vbc-expansionrenovation-continues.html