Downtown Dallas law school coming .... great news for Downtown!
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UNT's Downtown Dallas campus undergoing $25M redo
Dallas Business Journal by Candace Carlisle, Staff Writer
Date: Tuesday, September 25, 2012, 4:47pm CDT
The University of North Texas System has begun construction on a $25 million redevelopment project at its building in Downtown Dallas, which will open the school to the community.
It also will help ready the building to serve as the school's law school on an interim basis.
The project includes replacing the heating and air conditioning, updating utilities, adding a chiller, and extending the elevator and escalator to accommodate the UNT law school, which is scheduled to open August 2014.
The UNT law school will open up in the building until there's funding from the state to redevelop the neighboring historic Dallas Municipal Courts building, said UNT System Chancellor Lee Jackson. It is unknown when the state will get funds to support capital projects like the law school.
Along with redeveloping the building to accommodate a law library, classrooms and additional offices, the facade of the building facing the Main Street Garden park will be redeveloped to include additional windows that will open up the building to its Downtown Dallas community, he said.
The windows on the face of the building will integrate the school with the park and the surrounding neighborhood, he said.
"The building's lack of windows has been a barrier," Jackson said. "Not too many of the faculty and staff have wanted to move from their offices (on other campuses) into the building, but I think the redevelopment will open up a lot of possibilities."