From new tennis and softball facilities to a state-of-the-art $18 million student center, Anderson University is experiencing an historic period of construction to go along with unprecedented growth. The University has doubled in size since 2005, now enrolling some 3,200 students in its undergraduate and graduate programs. This fall, AU expects its 7th record freshman class in a row.
All of that growth has created a need for facilities. Beginning with an $8 million library in 2007, the University has added a host of other new buildings to its campus, once only 68 acres, but now 271 acres. 5 new residence halls have been built since 2007 to handle growth and ground was broken in May on the largest building project in university history, the G. Ross Anderson Jr. Student Center, an $18 million project that includes a movie theatre, 400-seat banquet hall, food kiosks from Chick-fil-A and Einstein Brothers Bagels, a new dining hall and a student fitness center. The student center is slated for completion in the fall of 2016. The current construction projects alone exceed $20 million and are providing hundreds of jobs for Upstate construction workers, not to mention area architects and construction firms.
The finishing touches are being applied to new athletic facilities at the AU Athletic Campus, with a new tennis center with 8 courts and a tennis tower, a new softball stadium with 200 stadium seats and the only synthetic surface in this part of the country, and a massive recreational swimming pool to accommodate students and the thousands of campers who attend various summer camps, including Palmetto Boys State.