SC State New Academic Building — $54.7M Orangeburg Campus Anchor

Crews set the last signed steel beam on South Carolina State University’s new academic building on July 2, 2026, roughly seven months after vertical construction started. The building will eventually see every undergraduate on campus walk through it.

Project Scope

The $54.7 million project delivers 90,000 sq ft on Geathers Street, across from the Engineering and Computer Science Complex and next to Turner Hall and Dukes Gymnasium. Turner Hall, the aging complex it functionally replaces, has been carrying a load it was never sized for.

The building becomes home to the College of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, and it absorbs most of SC State’s general education course delivery. Program includes a café, a mock courtroom, a radio station, large lecture halls, specialized learning labs and a flexible auditorium. Evoke Studio Architecture designed it; Harper Construction is building it, with Summit Steel on structural erection. Opening is targeted for the fourth quarter of 2027.

The ceremonial groundbreaking was in April 2024, but foundation work wasn’t reported underway until February 2026, which puts the real construction window at roughly 22 months.

Why It Matters

President Alexander Conyers credited the South Carolina General Assembly and Governor Henry McMaster with funding the project, and the funding structure is the story. This is 100 percent state-appropriated money, not bonds against future tuition, and it sits inside more than $210 million of construction underway or in development on the Orangeburg campus.

The rest of that program tells you what a sustained state commitment to an HBCU campus actually buys. A 384-bed renovation of Sojourner Truth Hall is in progress. A new 532-bed residence hall is going up. Bulldog Commons extends the Kirkland W. Green Student Center with new dining. A replacement for the Miller F. Whittaker Library, which will also house the honors college, is in design with construction expected to start later in 2026.

For a campus that spent years deferring maintenance, the sequencing matters as much as the dollars. Academic space, housing and dining are moving at once, which means the general contractors on that campus are coordinating four concurrent jobs against an academic calendar that doesn’t move.

Project Team & Details