Xavier Center, Hayden Circle and Hernandez Field are scheduled to be expanded and renovated at a cost of $12 million beginning in 2016 with a new arcade connecting Xavier to the Hannon Theatre on the west end of campus. The actual groundbreaking date depends on how soon the school can finish securing permits from the City of Los Angeles and funding necessary for the projects, according to Dr. Don Morgan, Senior Director of Advancement and Major Gifts and Endowment.
Current architectural plans reviewed by The Loyalist call for a new Xavier Center with designated catering facilities, event coordination offices, new storage, a sacristy, and removable walls that could allow the space to be partitioned.
The exterior west wall of the center will support new stands in anticipation of a permanent illuminated athletics stadium on Hernandez Field and a new field house to replace the aging standalone structure adjacent to the baseball diamond and theatre.
“As we started to design, we realized we could build a 4500-seat permanent home stadium for soccer, lacrosse and football,” said Dr. Morgan.
A new landscaped walkway on Loyola property will connect the theatre building to Xavier Center and the refurbished Hayden Circle beyond.
Even before construction begins along Venice, smaller scale but equally important projects will take place around campus this summer. Loyola athletics will benefit from a new track around Smith Field, air conditioning in the Leavy Gymnasium and adjacent locker rooms, and a new scoreboard in the aquatic center. The William H. Hannon Information Commons at Burns Library will see the addition of the school’s permanent archives and a renovated and expanded computer lab.
The new archival center in the library will include areas for students to use archival materials in research, as well as several cases for themed displays.
“It will have a room where students can go in and actually access the archive and if they want to, work with it, and then it’ll also have some display cases in the information commons where we can rotate displays of archival materials,” Dr. Morgan said.
Dr. Morgan said the projects slated for this summer are just components of the overall changes to be made around campus.
“You can’t do an athletic stadium on Hernandez Field until you move baseball, and you can’t move baseball onto the Dewey lot until you move parking, so it ends up being a domino effect,” he said. A new location for student and guest parking has yet to be finalized.
