The Red and Black

Issue date: 11/21/08 Section: News

Media Credit: KEVNEY MOSES Portions of South Campus are dedicated to Vince Dooley, including a plaza commemorating his accomplishments. [Click to enlarge]

The University will honor former athletic director Vince Dooley by dedicating the greater South Campus athletic facility in his name before the Georgia Tech football game next Saturday.

The Board of Regents approved the project early this year, and the Athletic Association funded the garden."The project is not just a garden - it's the entire athletic complex on the south precinct on campus which will be named for him, including the track, the Coliseum, baseball and tennis facilities, the Butts-Mehre and Rankin Smith buildings," said Arthur Johnson, associate athletic director for internal operations, who is managing the University's part of the project.

Gary B. Coursey & Associates, an architecture firm, was hired by the University to spearhead the project. Coursey asked Alex Maddox of the Atlanta landscape architecture firm jB+a to design.

To create a space that best honors Dooley, Coursey and Maddox said they aimed to include all of Dooley's character and what he meant to the University.

"There are a number of ways Vince fits into the design concept," Coursey said. "We placed a sign on the corner of Lumpkin Street which assigns it as the Vince Dooley Athletic Complex and designed a plaza which designates the Vince Dooley statue and his accomplishments."

Walls in the plaza depict his feats as football coach from 1964 to 1988 and athletics director from 1979 to 2003. The two sides will "embrace the 14-foot statue like a pair of praying hands," he said.

The statue shows two players hoisting Dooley off the field on their shoulders after the 1980 championship game. Maddox said he hoped the design looks like it was supposed to be there.

"The idea of the garden was to also be a teaching venue for the schools of horticulture and landscape architecture. Since Vince Dooley has a love for gardening, this could be a place where people and students could go and learn about plants."

The ceremony will be held in the Butts-Mehre Heritage Hall at 9:30 a.m. before the Georgia vs. Georgia Tech football game Nov. 29th. It will be followed by a ribbon cutting and unveiling.

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