URI’s Ballentine Hall will undergo renovations soon. Photo by Greg Clark.
Soon, the University of Rhode Island’s Ballentine Hall will be getting its first renovation in nearly 20 years.
Ballentine Hall, the home of the College of Business at URI, originally opened in 1967 after years of lobbying from students and faculty at the school. In 2003, Ballentine Hall went through $10.3 million in renovations, which included tearing down a part of the original building while leaving the foundation, structure and floor untouched.
The Dean of the College of Business Maling Ebrahimpour said that it is past time for more renovations. According to him, in the fast-moving world of business, you have to keep up, and over the past 20 years, things have changed substantially.
“Look at Google, look at Facebook, they changed the world, whether you like the company or not, they changed the way we do things,” he said.
Ebrahimpour believes that students will not be able to get the best education possible if the building is not renovated. This would make it more difficult for the students to get jobs after college, which, according to him, makes these renovation plans vital to the success of the College of Business.
Douglas Hales, the associate dean of undergraduates for the College of Business, agrees that the building’s renovation will deeply benefit students. He plans to do this by “providing more badly needed classroom space and a state-of-the-art trading room” which will be used to monitor Wall Street.
In addition to the new classroom space, the update will also add more office space and room for professors, many of whom do not have offices in the building.
“We have grown so much that the building is not big enough,” Ebrahimpour said. “In fact, some faculty are in the nursing building.”
He stressed that Ballentine Hall is the home of the business school and that students like having all of their professors and classes in the same building. Renovations will give students what Ebrahimpour described as a “one-stop-shop” for their business classes and academic advisors.
While the renovation plans are set, the project has not yet been funded. According to Ebrahimpour, it is planned to be privately funded by previous alumni. After that, the University will take bids from construction companies and architects who will work on the project. The design has already been funded and is expected to start in July.
According to Hayes, the current state of the building design includes natural light similar to the Fascitelli Center for Advanced Engineering, which opened in 2019.
They hope the building will be funded by the 2023-24 academic year. That is a very important year for the College of Business, as it is the college’s centennial.
“So, putting it together, that will be a great event that hopefully we will have enough funds to start the College of Business expansion,” Ebrahimpour said.
The expansion will include state-of-the-art technology such as the trading stock rooms, much more room in the classrooms for students and teachers and more offices for professors who are not currently located in Ballentine Hall, so the hall can truly be the home of the College of Business.