Before the start of the fall 2015 semester, major renovations to the main entrance at Florida Gulf Coast University were complete. With the project costing $1.5 million dollars, some students were against the renovations. Thomas Mayo, Director of Facilities and Planning at FGCU, defends the decisions made on renovating the FGCU main entrance.
According to the project presentation on the FGCU website, two concrete towers, with FGCU logos and lettering, were to be added to the main entrance replacing the horizontal concrete sign that sat there before. The presentation also showed that “views and vistas” were to be added along FGCU Boulevard.
I selected 10 random FGCU students in a period of three days. I interviewed them, and they were unanimously against the entrance enhancements.
“I don’t think it benefits FGCU in any way, and I know that the money could have gone to something more beneficial,” said Adrian Perez, senior at FGCU.
Perez said that FGCU should have invested that money into additional parking space on campus.
Another student, who wished to remain nameless, said, “Unnecessary construction does not promote sustainability and if we are sustainable we should cut that.”
FGCU was originally going to be a distance-learning university. That decision influenced the original FGCU entrance design.
According to Mayo, the project was proposed by Wilson Bradshaw, the president of FGCU. Bradshaw felt that FCGU needed something more distinctive.
The entry enhancement plans were cosmetic. There were no plans for additional roads or infrastructure proposed.
According to Mayo, FGCU spent over a year planning the entrance. A committee of students, faculty and staff were assembled to design the entrance.
The intention for this entrance was to emphasize the natural Florida landscape. FGCU sits alongside commercial and housing developments with formal landscape work.
“In the near future, with all of these developments, we’re really going to be the only frontage with natural Florida,” said Mayo.
According to Mayo, the intention of this entrance is to emphasize what FGCU represents. With both the concrete monuments and the landscape work symbolizing both modern construction and the natural Florida landscape coming together.
The committee studied entrances in neighboring state universities, and that influenced how the committee approached the project. As a whole, FGCU wanted something that represented the school, and it did not want to recycle any current designs from other state universities.
Currently renovations are still not complete. Mayo says that additional landscaping is to be completed along FGCU Boulevard during the summer 2016 semesters.
“The entrance projected us from a community college image to a Division 1 university image,” said Robert Green, the Welcome Center representative.
Green is the FGCU employee who sits in the information booth, located at the main entrance, and waves to commuters every day.
Green says that he encountered negative comments from some students while it was being developed. However, after the completion he says he has gotten positive reviews from everyone.
Green says from his experience everyone likes the tower, especially with the FGCU logo and lettering on top, and that everyone likes how the tower and horizontal concrete sign light up at night.
Green says the biggest complaint he has gotten is about the right side of FGCU Boulevard not having a sidewalk. He says many people find it hard to take pictures of the entrance because there is no sidewalk. He also says that many students have told him that the price of the project is too high.
Whether one agrees with the FGCU entrance or not, President Bradshaw felt that FGCU needed something monumental. It needed to something to represent how much FGCU has grown since 1997, especially after the Dunk City impact.
The entrance enhancements also tell a story, Mayo says. The stark contrast between the concrete towers and its surrounding landscape shows a marriage between nature and man-made structures, two contrasting ideas coming together to advocate sustainability.
To him, that is what represents true sustainability.