Aggarwal Hall will be a home for every Hoo.
With a ceremonial groundbreaking on Friday, University of Virginia alumni officials took the next step in erecting a new home for the UVA Alumni Association. The facility, to be called “Aggarwal Hall,” is named after Reggie Aggarwal, a 1991 graduate of the McIntire School of Commerce and the largest individual donor in the history of the Alumni Association.
More than 150 people gathered under a white tent, with the old Alumni Hall, which is being demolished, as a backdrop, for a ceremony that included a cappella singers, Cavman and enthusiastic audience response. As alumni and University officials plunged their ceremonial shovels into the dirt, audience members shot orange and blue confetti in the air from party poppers.
The reimagined hall will be a 50,000-square-foot project featuring large, flexible event spaces, a café, an open atrium, outdoor terraces, a library and parking. The project, budgeted at $63 million, will move the alumni building closer to Emmet Street. Beth Hedde, a 2005 School of Architecture graduate now with Centerbrook Architects & Planners, is the principal architect. Hourigan Group is expected to complete construction in 18 months, for a spring 2027 opening.
Lily West, the Alumni Association’s president, speaks about her overwhelming gratitude in the progress of the building project and how this represents “radical success.” (Photo by Andy Franck, UVA Alumni Association)
“The design blends a traditional exterior inspired by Pavilion IX and a modern interior that will enable our work for generations to come,” said Lily West, the Alumni Association’s president and chief executive officer.
West led off the afternoon’s speakers, who included interim University President Paul Mahoney; Aggarwal; Stephen Gibson, who chairs the Alumni Association’s building committee; and Mark Luellen, UVA’s senior vice president for external relations.
“If there is one thing that this month has reminded me, it is that UVA is a perpetual institution,” Mahoney said. “Many things around the University may change, but its essential mission remains the same. The University community is full of talented, remarkable people dedicated to carrying that mission forward. That has been true for generations and will be true long after we are gone. There is no better representation of this enduring community than the University’s alumni network.”
Mahoney said UVA’s more than 270,000 alumni around the world, spanning nearly every profession, are a hidden advantage for University graduates connected through the Alumni Association.
