The 5,400-seat, 160,000-square-foot facility will provide a premier gathering space for major campus events and serve as the new home for Elon's basketball and volleyball programs when it opens next year.
Elon’s Schar Center now boasts the iconic “E” monogram as work progresses on the 5,400-seat, 160,000-square-foot convocation center that’s slated to open next year.
It took crews less than an hour to hoist the 950-pound halogen-lit monogram into place and tick off the latest milestone in the Schar Center’s construction. Built from aluminum, the “E” is 13 feet high and 12 feet wide and sits to the left of the main entrance to the Schar Center.
The Schar Center will serve as a venue for convocations, speakers and other major campus events. It will also be the new home court for Elon’s basketball and volleyball teams, with triple the space of Alumni Memorial Gymnasium, and include a practice facility with two full courts, hospitality room, club-level seating and high-definition video boards.
Brad Moore, university architect and director of the Planning, Design & Construction Department, said work is progressing on finishing the exterior of the center and installing windows, and when complete, the building will essentially be “dried in.” That will allow the focus to shift to the completion of interior walls and finishes, Moore said.
Within the main arena, crews are pouring the concrete risers that rise up from the main floor. Outside the building, work to pave the main parking lots behind the Schar Center is moving ahead, he said.
Alumni, parents and friends can follow the Schar Center progress on a new website — www.elon.edu/scharcenter — which includes the latest photos and news of the facility, as well as renderings, a live construction cam and photos from past project milestones.
Visitors to the website can take a look inside and outside the Schar Center with fly-through videos. In addition, an interactive construction cam allows viewers to scroll back through construction photos and provides a time-lapse feature so viewers can watch the center take shape.
The facility is named for Elon parents Dwight and Martha Schar, of Palm Beach, Fla., who are among Elon’s most generous donors and whose $13 million in gifts to the university provided lead funding for the convocation center and the expanded School of Communications.