ATLANTA — Georgia State University leaders are celebrating a new research tower that expands the campus and opportunities for students.
Georgia State’s growth has transformed a large part of downtown Atlanta. Channel 2’s Steve Gehlbach got a look inside the new building.
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On the first floor, you’ll find a collaboration space and a big lecture hall. Up on the second floor, there are more classrooms and teaching labs and above that new modern research facility.
Students, teachers and researchers are already using the new space from conducting experiments and biomedical research to labs and everyday classrooms.
“It’s really fun to be in a new building. You get to see a lot of new equipment and use space that hasn’t been used before, and use it the way you see and mold it around what you want,” said Dr. Zac Saylor with GSU Institute for Biomedical Sciences.
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Gov. Brian Kemp got a tour of the new research tower before joining GSU president M. Brian Blake and other dignitaries to cut the ribbon.
The building sits on what was an empty parking lot in the heart of downtown. Now, it’s the final building block filling a spot next to the Georgia State MARTA station along Jesse Hill Jr. Drive.
“But the building itself is not the destination, the Research Tower is infrastructure for what comes next,” Blake said.
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It’s more than just the 9-story building with 155,000 square feet. It’s about teaching and learning, the ideas and discoveries that will happen there.
“Cause it helps contribute to a great workforce, which makes it easy for me to be able to sell this state to a lot folks who want to hire new college graduates,” Kemp said.
The expansion and transformation of the Georgia State campus is not over. They just knocked down a building and construction is underway on a new and larger quad that will be completed before the end of the semester.
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