Knight Management Center begins to open its doors

Four of the eight buildings in the rising Knight Management Center, new home to the Graduate School of Business (GSB), opened this month and nearly 150 staff members have moved in. The remainder of the facility is scheduled to open in March.

The four buildings now in use include three buildings on Serra Street and one on Arguello Way, all of which consist of ground-floor classrooms and faculty offices in upper floors.

Primarily administrative staff has transitioned to Knight, including executive education, admission, external-relations and human-resources staff, said Kathleen Kavanaugh, Knight Management Center program director.  Some classes have moved to the new facility.

The Knight Management Center project was a response to a new GSB curriculum that launched in fall 2007 calling for more classes held in smaller settings. Whereas the old GSB facility consisted mostly of 70- to 80-student, tiered-row classrooms, the Knight Center features smaller and more intimate rooms to accommodate this change in curriculum.

“The Knight Management Center has many more of these different-sized classrooms where you can reconfigure the room and do lots of different, more experiential projects and more seminar-style classes,” Kavanaugh said.

Faculty and students now using the facility praise Knight’s modern equipment as well as its environment and décor. The overall setup of the buildings has changed to allow for better lighting.

“There’s a natural light everywhere. It strikes me as a much more welcoming environment for learning,” said Derrick Bolton, GSB assistant dean and director of M.B.A. admission, in an e-mail to The Daily. “It reflects, and even enhances, the GSB’s focus on collaboration and innovation.”

The complex is on track to receive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification, the highest level of environmental sustainability certification that the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) awards, Kavanaugh added. The USGBC has already approved the design of the complex for LEED Platinum, and the GSB will submit a report on the construction involved in the project later this year.

The budgeted project cost for the center was $345 million, according to Kavanaugh.

The cost “will come in under that,” said Kavanaugh. “The question now is just how much under we’re trying to be.”

The current goal is to have all eight buildings of the Knight Management Center and its underground parking garage open for spring quarter. The completed complex is designed around a courtyard that features a new cylindrical, indoor-outdoor dining facility, and the whole center contains more green space than the old GSB.

Correction: In an earlier version of this article, The Daily incorrectly reported that the construction cost, not the project cost, for the building was $345 million.