Liberty hopes new ski facility will be finished in February

Lynchburg News & Advance
Published: October 7, 2008

Liberty University is moving ahead with a series of campus improvements, including preparations for a new artificial ski slope.

Logging began late last month for the Liberty Mountain Snowflex Center.

The year-round ski facility, slated to cover almost an acre of Candlers Mountain, is being made with the synthetic material Snowflex.

Liberty University hopes to debut the finished slope sometime in February.

“That project is off and running right now,“ said Lee Beaumont, director of auxiliary services. “We’re quite excited about it.“

The evangelical Christian university has a student population of about 11,300 and has received city approval to expand to 15,000 students over the next five years.

This fall semester, Liberty has rolled out several new amenities, including a student center and a diner named in memory of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr.

The Tilley Student Center on Campus North offers students coffee, wireless Internet, pool tables and regular events such as movies and live music. The space, converted from its past use as a warehouse, opened last week. It is named after donors Thomas and Iris Tilley, who are also the in-laws of Liberty Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr.

Doc’s Diner, which opened this month on Campus East, is decorated with photos and mementos of Falwell Sr. and features his favorite dessert, banana pudding.

Other menu offerings include Spirit of the Mountain fries and Macel’s Hot Apple Pie, named for Falwell Sr.‘s widow, Macel Falwell.

The university also has started construction on an indoor soccer facility and a Barnes & Noble bookstore. Other projects in the works include new intramural sports fields along the base of Candlers Mountain, and the second and final phase of the campus perimeter road.

And last month, the school announced it has purchased 7 acres of Norfolk Southern property to help pave the way for vehicle and pedestrian tunnels outlined in the school’s master plan. The tunnels, tentatively scheduled to break ground next spring, would start on the Liberty campus, go under the railroad tracks and then empty onto the Wards Road corridor. The purchased land will serve as the entrances.