The University of Lincoln is to move its School of Art and Design into new facilities on its Brayford Pool campus, and move out of Thomas Parker House and the Greestone Building.
Sources have told The Linc that the university will be constructing a dedicated art and design building, and close its current facilities in the cathedral quarter, as part of a £15m capital spending spree.
The School of Art and Design’s new building will apparently be placed on the gravelled area next to the main car park.
Chad Varah House will remain part of the university, as it will once-again be the home of the Lincoln School of Theology.
The money is apparently going to be borrowed, rather than taken from the university’s reserves. Meanwhile, much of the money for the new School of Engineering will be provided by private sources. The School is being developed in partnership with Siemens, a German engineering company.
The move out of Thomas Parker House and Greestone is expected to save the university money in the long run, as they currently pay “huge amounts of rent” and the buildings are “incredibly maintenance hungry”.
The buildings are also “difficult to adapt to university use”, one source says.
Details of the funding plans came out after a finance meeting to discuss the university’s new budget, which will run up until 2014. The budget is the last one to be put together while Professor David Chiddick was vice-chancellor. He handed over the top job to Professor Mary Stuart on November 1st.
Chiddick, whose background is in town planning, presided over the radical development of the Brayford campus during the last nine years.
John Plumridge, the director of estates and commercial facilities at the university, says: “The university has developed an Estates Strategy which will go before the Board of Governors on November 24th.”
However, “It would not be appropriate to comment on details contained within the strategy until after the meeting.”