The 5,100-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 this year.
Work continues inside Elon’s new Schar Center as visitors can now get a clearer picture of what the state-of-the-art facility will look and feel like once complete later this year.
Crews are finishing the floor inside the Maurice J. Koury Practice Facility, which features two full courts, and the seating is now in place within the main arena. Resources for athletes including the weight room are nearing completion, as are interior finishes. Spaces for visitors, such as the Robert V. Gill Room continue to take shape.
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. The facility is scheduled to open in fall 2018.
Alumni, parents and friends can follow the Schar Center progress at its website —www.elon.edu/scharcenter — which includes the latest photos and news of the facility, as well as renderings, a 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.