New bridges provide Lancer Park with better access to main campus
From left: Alan Cook (Longwood Capital Planning & Construction), Farmville Town Manager Gerry Spates, Otis Brown (Longwood Real Estate Foundation), John Adams (rector of the Longwood Board of Visitors), Thomas Talley (English Construction), Gary Johnson (RK&K, the designers), SGA president Ben Brittain, Longwood President Patrick Finnegan, Eric Houghland (High Bridge Trail State Park), Ken Copeland (Longwood Real Estate Foundation) and Buddy Barron (Longwood Facilities Management).
Two new bridges that link Longwood’s main campus to Lancer Park, a nearby complex of university-managed apartments and athletics fields, opened Sept. 9, 2010.
Students who live in the apartments or wish to use the athletics fields can now access them from a new pedestrian bridge that crosses from Lancer Park over Third Street to Grove Street (near Buffalo Street) and a new vehicular bridge that crosses over a former railroad bed. Both bridges provide safer, more direct and more visually appealing access to Lancer Park, which is home to more than 250 students.
Otis Brown, president of the Longwood Real Estate Foundation, said the project “represents the pulling together of the two campuses.” The bulk of the project was financed through savings from the low-interest rate on a bond consolidation of all three Longwood-managed apartment communities that the Real Estate Foundation negotiated in 2007.
