ATLANTA (May 16) – The Georgia Tech Athletic Association has recently completed an extensive renovation project for the Arthur B. Edge Intercollegiate Athletic Center, the home of Tech’s athletic offices, and more than 40 staff and coaches have benefitted from an expansion and improvement of their space.
The project began in late 1998 after the Russell Athletic Company closed its apparel store which was located on the street level of Bobby Dodd Way in the ground floor of the Homer Rice Center for Sports Performance. The result is that many of Tech’s Olympic sports coaches and several administrative departments are now more conveniently located on the first floor of the Edge Center, and they occupy larger floor space than they previously did.
“This renovation was sorely needed,” said Tech director of athletics Dave Braine. “Our staff has continued to grow and we constantly find ourselves in need of more room. It is important for us to utilize all the space we have at our disposal.”
The first beneficiary of the recent renovation was the ticket office, which is now located at street level on Bobby Dodd Way in the space formerly occupied by the Russell store. Ticket purchasers now have easy access to ticket windows, three inside and three on the street. The eight-member ticketing staff and seasonal help now work in space twice as large as before to serve the Tech alumni and ticket-buying public.
“Our main concern was to relocate the ticket office, which was in the middle of our lobby and not very accessible to the public and people on the street,” Braine said. “It is now on the street level where people can walk right up to a window or come inside and purchase tickets to our events. When the Russell store closed and moved out, it gave us the ability to make our ticket operation more accessible to the public.”
The ticket office relocation enabled the athletic association to set in motion a series of other moves. The business office, which has five staff members, moved into the space formerly occupied by the ticket office and is now more centrally located to serve Tech’s student-athletes and sports operations.
The administrative offices of Braine and his senior administrative staff moved into vacant space in the Homer Rice Center, above the McDonald’s restaurant. That opened up first-floor space for 25 other staff and coaches, including Tech’s marketing and promotions staff, the compliance staff and the coaching staffs for swimming, softball, volleyball and baseball, as well as several other staff members. The coaches of all but baseball previously were jammed into third-floor space with men’s and women’s basketball or the academic center.
“We were able to relocate many of our coaches and other departments to bigger and nicer offices,” said Braine. “We still had some coaches’ offices in the Academic Center, and it allowed us to use that entire space for academic assistance. Each sport’s coaches now have their own space in a suite of offices, which gives each of them more privacy and are more conveniently located for their student-athletes.”
The total expenditure for the renovation came in at slightly more than $520,000 with all project management and design efforts conducted in-house. The project is part of Tech’s Olympic Facility Campaign, for which more than $30 million was spent to build the Homer Rice Center, fund the most recent renovation to Alexander Memorial Coliseum, and make improvements to Bobby Dodd Stadium, the James Luck Building next to the Coliseum, the Tech aquatics center, the Edge Center, O’Keefe Gym, the George C. Griffin Track and the Bill Moore Tennis Center.
