ASU’s Windgate Center for 3-D Arts to be relocated

The location for Arkansas State University’s proposed Windgate Center for Three-Dimensional Arts will shift to the east, due to restrictive parking concerns and it better fits within the university’s overall campus master plan, Chancellor Kelly Damphousse said.

Originally located directly south of the Fine Arts Center, the new location will be east of Fine Arts.

“I’m very pleased that all parties involved saw this as a great compromise for the campus,” Damphousse said. “It is a more efficient use of our land as the footprint better fits the building design, but it also stays close to our Fine Arts Center. It will assist with campus beautification as we remove some older housing.”

A series of on-campus small homes dating from the 1950s will be taken down to make way for the art facility. Most of the houses in this portion of campus were removed as a part of the pack place construction and the remaining houses were slated for removal in the university’s master plan in coming years. The persons currently slated for the houses will be relocated to spaces in The Village apartments nearby.

One of the impacts of the original Windgate building footprint was the loss of close to 200 reserved parking spaces across two lots (S-16 and S-17). These parking spaces will now stay in the university’s parking inventory, and those who had moved to an adjacent lot will receive notices starting Tuesday (July 30), that they may return to their original parking spaces if they desire.

As the last step of a master plan for reserved parking on campus, the conversion of lots south of the Agriculture (SW-6) and south of Arkansas Biosciences Institute (S-15) as well as one lot east of Fine Arts (S-18) will continue.

“Before this week, we had a backlog of 600 applicants for contract parking spots, and by bringing the lots on-line as reserved we can relieve about 200 of that,” Assistant Vice Chancellor for Auxiliary Services Craig Johnson said.