A rendering of the Cofrin Technology and Education Center planned for the UW-Green Bay campus.
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — The green light has been given to replace the 52-year-old Cofrin Library at UW-Green Bay.
Ground will be broken next spring on the Cofrin Technology and Education Center– a five-story, $101 million replacement approved recently by the state’s building commission.
It will drastically change the landscape for the state’s fastest growing university, as the current eight-story library will be torn down.
Opening in 1972, the Cofrin Library still gets plenty of use.
“It’s usually utilized for a quiet space, studying,” said Karime Galaviz, UW-Green Bay’s student body president. “There’s private study rooms in there that we use a lot.”
However, campus leaders say the library doesn’t match current student needs. Plus, it has structural issues that a 2020 study found would be more cost effective to replace rather than renovate.
“It really represents a library that made perfect sense in the late 1960s, early 70s,” said UW-Green Bay Chancellor Michael Alexander. “It does not make sense and it cannot be transformed to a library that makes sense for the 21st Century.”
The new library building will still house books, but also the Center for First Nations Education, Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, administration, and plenty of updated technology.
It will be located between the Weidner Center and Rose Hall, where the Phoenix statue currently sits.
It is expected to open in early 2027.
The current library building will likely come down in 2028, according to Alexander. It clears the way for an important college campus feature that is currently missing here.
“If you’ve been on our campus, you’ll notice we don’t really have a traditional university quad, so a way you can see all the academic buildings, the way students can easily navigate where they’re going,” said Alexander. “This change will give us that. It will really make the Cofrin Technology and Education Center the front door of the university in a really clear and obvious way.”
Alexander says that’s important when half of the students are the first generation in their family to go to college.
Existing students say they’ll appreciate the new layout as well.
“I know it’s not going to happen for a couple more years, but I’ll definitely be coming back to see that once I graduate,” said Galaviz.
During construction, the Phoenix statue will temporarily move to outside the Kress Center before moving back to the new quad.
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