Leland, GCSU receive awards

Last weekend the University System of Georgia held its 13th annual USG Facilities Officers Conference in Savannah, Ga. At the conference, GCSU was honored with two prestigious awards.

The Campus Theatre was awarded the Excellence in Public Private Ventures award and received a pyramid-shaped crystal trophy that will be displayed in the Campus Theatre box office. In addition, President Dorothy Leland was honored with the Cornerstone Award and given a marble monument-shaped trophy.

The Public Private Venture award is given in recognition of building projects that meet the needs of a university in an innovative way. Linda Daniels, USG vice chancellor for facilities, says that with this award they recognize projects that were executed in a creative way.

“This particular project was one that was funded with fees and revenue-generating capacity of the bookstore to do a project that Georgia College never would have gotten before,” Daniels said.  “It met so many categories of visionary planning and partnership with the community and with your funding partner. It was the best private public venture project in the system here.”

However, this is not the first award that the Campus Theatre has been given. Earlier this Fall, the project was given the Best Commercial Redevelopment Activity award by the Georgia Downtown Association. This award recognized the project for its creative reuse of the 1935 historic downtown building.

Amy Amason, vice president of External Relations and University Advancement, believes the Campus Theatre renovations were creative in making the historic building multi-functional.

“The Campus Theatre was a unique project — it included the adaptive reuse of an historic building in downtown Milledgeville with academic space and revenue-generating space as well,” Amason said. “It was financed through GHEFA and was the first project to do so.”

The additional award received at the conference was a surprise to President Leland. The Cornerstone Award is rarely awarded and has only been given to four university presidents since its creation 14 years ago. This honor is given to senior administrators who have noticeably exceeded all expectations in meeting the needs of the university’s facilities in a creative way. Daniels said that Leland was selected to receive the award because of her leadership in meeting the campus facility needs.

“Georgia College has such a history of historic important buildings, so you’re working with a legacy of buildings that were old —very arcane, very antiquated —and needed a lot of attention. We were recognizing President Leland as having the vision and the perseverance because it’s a thankless task to renovate old buildings as opposed to building a new glamorous (building),” Daniels said.

“I was totally surprised and, of course, honored,” Leland said. “I think the award represents the strong, collaborative relationship we have enjoyed with the USG Facilities Division, which has worked closely with us on many important campus improvements.”

Posted by Lauren Davidson on Nov 11 2010. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.