CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The gold and blue of West Virginia University now hangs outside a Downtown Charleston building visibly marking the land-grant institution’s expansion in the Capital City.
The newest occupants of Charleston’s Equities House include WVU’s College of Law, the WVU Extension Service and the John Chambers College of Business and Economics.
“We’ve been talking about this for a while and the opportunity came up to have presence,” said Rob Alsop, vice president of strategic initiatives for WVU.
“We know that there’s a lot of areas in West Virginia that are going through a transformation from an economic perspective and we really think we can add value and we want to be there (in Charleston) for the long term.”
The University has signed a five-year lease for the Charleston location.
Equities House, which was built in 1930, is located near the city’s South Side Bridge.
In all, the WVU space at Equities House covers 19,000 square feet with classrooms, offices and conference rooms on two floors.
WVU’s plans to locate there were first announced last September.
Since then, renovation work at a cost of $750,000 has been underway with funding from private support and a reallocation of WVU resources already being used in Charleston, according to university information.
Previously, the Kanawha County WVU Extension Office, Family Nutrition Program and SNAP-Ed, After School Network and their staff members had been in space in Charleston’s Kanawha City.
Hello to our new neighbors in Charleston! I am thrilled with our new space, which will give our University a base of operations to better serve the capital city and our entire state! pic.twitter.com/1GEabcSKvG
— E. Gordon Gee (@gordongee) January 31, 2020
Along with extension and law activities, some of the new space could be used as a business incubator.
“We’re not bringing undergraduate programs to Charleston. This is all about some of our entrepreneurship and some of the things that we do and specialize in and then, of course, our extension presence going forward,” said Alsop.
The goal, he said, was to add to programs already being offered in the Kanawha Valley through institutions like the University of Charleston, Marshall University and West Virginia State University.
“This is not coming in to take over. This is really we want to partner with those folks and we want to be part of the continued rebirth and revitalization of Charleston.”