Georgia State University finishing $1M expansion, ending cacophony

Regular listeners of Georgia State University’s student-run radio station WRAS might have heard unfamiliar sounds during recent broadcasts.

That wasn’t just audio feedback or static; it was power tools.

According to GSU’s student newspaper, The Signal, student-run media outlets and other organizations operating out of the downtown Student Center West have been complaining about the sound of jackhammers rattling and drills chewing through the walls, as the university converts its former law school library into the new home of the Byrdine F. Lewis College of Nursing and Health Professions.

WRAS, which airs on 88.5 FM, told the paper that construction noises were being picked up by their microphones during broadcasts.

Luckily for those annoyed students, the $1 million project is wrapping up this month, primed to be ready for the upcoming spring semester.

The renovation of the old law school library was divided up into two phases—one focused on plumbing, drywall, and flooring; the other mostly on furnishings—and will ultimately yield the nursing school a 20,000-square-foot facility with a new “gait lab,” according to The Signal.

A gait lab is a facility outfitted to study the strides of athletes, and it will also be used for sports medicine and physical therapy.

This retrofitting project comes on the heels of the completion of the Courtland Street Bridge replacement, a $25 million redo of a 110-year-old roadway over a major pedestrian thoroughfare for students and faculty. (Proposed bike lanes and pedestrian-friendly improvements have yet to be installed.)

The school is also slated to raze one of its old classroom buildings, Kell Hall, next spring or summer to make way for green space, the student paper previously reported.

Additionally, the university has plans to lower its Library Plaza—across Courtland Street from Student Center West—to street level.

• Nursing school gets $1 million expansion [The Signal]