Kennesaw State is experiencing serious growing pains as they continue to expand campus to accommodate students and faculty. Recent memory has seen the construction of several projects including the new Science Laboratory Building, University Village expansion, University Place expansion, Prillaman Health Sciences, Central Deck and the KSU stadium.
According to the History of Kennesaw State University, written by Thomas A. Scott in 1998, Kennesaw Junior College had an enrollment of 1,278 in the fall of 1967. We’ve grown exponentially since then. As we are the third largest school in the state, we are constantly finding ourselves too big for our britches. While the construction on campus can be a problem, students are willing to work around it because it is helping the growth of the university.
The real pains of our constant expansion lie outside of our campus boundaries.
The Frey family farm is the original source for KSU’s campus. Cobb County and the city of Kennesaw have grown just as much since our founding so space around KSU is limited. Our campus can’t expand any further east or north due to Interstate 75. Further western expansion is not viable unless we purchase and remove the Pinetree Country Club. Campus could grow across from Chastain, but it would require purchasing many businesses and removing them too. So with our landlocked campus, we can really only grow like the old Frey cotton did, toward the sky. This can be seen in our eight-story Central Deck as well as the towering Social Sciences Building and Clendenin Building.
Taller buildings on campus lead to an increase in population. That means more people are living and working in the same area. If you have an increase in the amount of people in the area, you need to increase the infrastructure of the surrounding areas in order to accommodate. That increase is slow to come.
The recent Big Shanty Road extension project has created another east-west feeder road that runs parallel to Chastain Road and Barrett Parkway. This should help alleviate the amount of traffic on Chastain as well as Barrett. It also runs directly between campus and The Lofts of Kennesaw apartments.
“The (Lofts) location is great! I love how it is right next to the stadium,” said Blake Barrows, a sophomore majoring in finance.
Barrows, who has recently moved into The Lofts also said, “The extension is super helpful and saves time with traffic.”
The road doesn’t directly affect the traffic that builds up at the intersection of Chastain and Frey Road during rush hour from I-75 as morning and night students both try to access campus and the highway, but it alleviates surrounding congestion for new residents. Students know how much of a nightmare it is to try to turn east on to Chastain at 5 p.m.
There is a project in the works to try to fix this. It is called the Skip Spann Connector, named after the former associate director of development for athletics. The road would be built over I-75, and Frey Road, Busbee Drive and the East Deck would get a new entrance onto the connector. The other important aspect of the connector would be the direct access roads leading from the southbound off-ramp as well as the northbound on-ramp. This would let KSU students quickly enter or leave the interstate without having to drive on Chastain Road at all.
This project would have been funded by the T-SPLOST referendum that was voted down on July 31, but other sources are being considered.
KSU is definitely having growing pains, but it is necessary for our continued growth as a university.
