University Times

Plans for a building to house Pitt's new undergraduate College of Business Administration (CBA) are on hold pending a Board of Trustees-ordered review of University construction projects.

Trustees chairperson J.W. Connolly said the review may show that CBA classes, offices and labs could fit in existing Pitt facilities.

According to Connolly, that might eliminate the need for a $20 million, 85,000 square foot CBA building that University administrators have been planning to construct at the current site of Pitt's SB parking lot, located across Bouquet Street from Mervis Hall, home of the Katz Graduate School of Business.

CBA is enrolling its first class of students this fall. The students will spend the first two years of the four-year program taking arts and sciences courses in existing Pitt classrooms. But unless new facilities are found for CBA after that, a space crunch is expected. Business school officials had hoped to open a CBA building in fall 1997.

"We don't expect to reach maximum enrollment capacity [in CBA] until the year 2002, so we're not facing any kind of immediate crisis," said H.J. Zoffer, who is dean of both CBA and the Katz graduate school. "What we're facing is an inconvenience that will build into a crisis over a five- or six-year period if it's not taken care of. Hopefully, we're on a fast track to get it taken care of." Zoffer, Connolly and members of Pitt's central administration agree that Mervis Hall is too small for a full-fledged CBA as well as the Katz school. Provost James Maher said, "I think there's clearly a need for more space [for CBA] than Mervis Hall holds, and we're looking for creative solutions for that problem." Maher chairs a committee that has been assigned by the trustees to explain Pitt's current construction plans in light of the University's academic needs. Maher said his committee hopes to report its findings this fall to the trustees' property and facilities committee, which in turn will make recommendations to the full board.

Trustees chairperson Connolly said: "We want to make certain that we're not just running around adding buildings. Every building we add costs us money for maintenance, it costs us debt service money, etcetera. Those become permanent and very expensive decisions. I just want to make sure — and I know all the trustees want to make sure — that we're doing the right things.

"Obviously, we need more space, but there's more than one way to skin that cat," Connolly continued. "We already have a lot of buildings. One that comes quickly to mind is the Masonic Temple. Right now, it's just sitting there. There's a possibility that a facility like that could be better used. And there are other [existing] buildings on the campus that might be turned into a College of Business Administration." The CBA building was among the construction projects included in the University's master space plan for Pittsburgh campus development. The city Planning Commission approved the master plan in November 1994, following several public hearings and months of discussion within the University.

A month earlier, however, Pitt's Board of Trustees had stopped short of endorsing the CBA building or any of the other construction projects proposed in the master plan (which was an appendix to the University's "Toward the 21st Century" long-range plan). While the board approved the plan's overall goals, it held off on endorsing the plan's strategies for achieving those goals until the costs were better known.

One of those strategies was building a CBA facility.

Asked if Pitt's commitment to the facility has lessened, Maher replied: "I don't want to say that it [the CBA building] is much less certain than it used to be. But I would say that we have to demonstrate that our building plans make sense in terms of our academic plans. I think that's a very reasonable set of questions that have been posed to us, and my committee is working very hard to get answers." Asked whether that wasn't a vague answer, Maher laughed and said, "I'm really not pulling any punches on this. It's just that I've got a committee that hasn't made its decisions yet, so I don't want to say anything at this point that will turn out to be wrong." Whatever the fate of the CBA building, Pitt's administration remains committed to CBA as an academic entity, Maher emphasized. "The decision to open the school was made some time ago and is not being reviewed. The school is opening this week, and we have a real commitment to it," the provost said.

CBA Dean Zoffer said he remains hopeful that a CBA building could open in fall 1997. That was never more than "a reasonable target date," according to Zoffer, although an early CBA recruiting brochure stated that the college hoped to have its own building by that time.

"That brochure is now out of print and is not being reprinted," said Zoffer. "What it said was, the expectation was that we would open a new building in September 1997. But the whole question of space planning has taken on a life of its own now, and therefore the new brochures don't carry any statement of a time [for opening a CBA building] at all." The future of a $30 million fund-raising campaign for CBA appears to be even less certain than it was in fall 1993, when it was suspended following the resignations of the two trustees heading it.

Thomas J. Usher and former trustee Thomas Marshall said they resigned as campaign leaders because Pitt's administration ignored their warnings that some potential donors would refuse to contribute because Pitt provides some fringe benefits to same-sex couples. Pitt suspended the campaign at that point and has not yet revived it. To date, $1.6 million has been raised toward the $30 million goal. About $20 million of the goal is earmarked for the CBA building. The rest would go toward scholarships and upfront costs.

Business school administrators say they hope to revive the campaign this fall. But trustees chairperson Connolly said this month that he favors including CBA in a broader capital campaign to benefit the whole University. "I am hopeful — and I'm speaking personally here, not on behalf of the board — that we can begin a major capital campaign in the not very distant future that will include, among other things, the CBA. It is my preference that [fund raising for] the CBA would be part of a broader campaign." Zoffer cited uncertainties over the fund-raising campaign and the CBA building as among the reasons CBA fell short of its first-year goal of enrolling 225 students. Instead, the college enrolled 155 students, out of 700 who applied.

The dean said the shortfall did not worry him. "We should pick up some transfer students and see some enrollment increases in the next few years," he said. In a Katz school news release, Zoffer said he believes this year's class will provide "the kind of academic and leadership excellence and diversity we need to help make the program a success." Of the 155 students, 75 percent are from Pennsylvania, 45 percent are women, and 13 percent are African-Americans, according to the release. It noted that CBA received applications from students from throughout the United States and from El Salvador, France, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Korea, Pakistan, Taiwan, Turkey and Thailand.

— Bruce Steele