Campbell moving law school to Raleigh

The school will shift from the main campus in Buies Creek to a site downtown

Campbell University will move its 350-student law school from rural Harnett County to a downtown Raleigh awash in new activity.

The Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law, which employs about 50 staff and faculty members, will move to 225 Hillsborough St. The 107,000-square-foot downtown building is owned by a company headed by Art Pope, a former state legislator and well-known conservative.

The move, which mirrors a national trend toward urban law schools, is welcome in a city in the midst of a massive revitalization.

The details of the deal were not yet clear; city and university officials plan to announce the move today. But a letter to tenants of the building said that the sale should be final by March; renovations will begin next summer.

The move will bring an infusion of young people to the state capital just months before the city plans to open its new $221 million convention center, a Marriott Hotel and an underground parking garage.

In all, $2.5 billion in private and public investment is being pumped into downtown. Supporters say those efforts to remake Raleigh into a 24-hour city are working.

"We're gaining some of the traction that we had hoped to get with all the public and private investment," said Jessica Brock, a commercial real estate broker who represents the owner of the Wachovia Capitol Center tower on Fayetteville Street.

The law school will add a youthful element to a city better known for its government workers.

"It means more people to frequent stores, rent office space and buy all those condos we're building," Brock said.

Variety Realty, a company owned by Pope, bought the property at Hillsborough and Dawson streets for $11 million in 2005. Several of its tenants, including the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law and Americans for Prosperity, are conservative-leaning nonprofit organizations.

Tenants said Campbell University President Jerry M. Wallace toured the building with other university officials today as a photographer snapped pictures.

Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker scheduled a public announcement today of "information of educational and economic significance to Raleigh." He declined to comment further, and calls to Campbell officials were not returned Wednesday.

Campbell, a Baptist-affiliated university in Buies Creek, has been studying the move for about a year.

Leary Davis, the Elon University law school dean and the founding dean at Campbell's law school in 1976, said Campbell's law school and undergraduate programs will benefit from a high-profile location in the Capital City.

"I think they'll find a lot of synergy there they had not anticipated," Davis said. "People in Raleigh who had not been interested in Campbell University will become interested in it because it's in Raleigh."

Davis said he thought moving the law school to Raleigh was a promising idea in the 1980s. It was never fully studied but was on a list of long-term strategies for the school.

Now, he said, urbanization of law schools is a growing trend that brings students closer to courthouses and legal professionals.

Urban law schools

Last year, two new law schools opened in North Carolina cities.

Elon, which has its main campus about 24 miles east near Burlington, refurbished Greensboro's former public library with the help of millions of dollars raised by civic leaders. Fifty-five lawyers in the Greensboro area act as mentors to first-year law students.

Charlotte School of Law also opened as the state's first for-profit law school.

Raleigh has been the largest capital city without a law school, Davis said. But not anymore.

The Campbell law school boasts more than 2,800 alumni, including 1,900 who live and work in North Carolina.

Caldwell Barefoot, a 1994 Campbell Law graduate who now practices in Raleigh, said the new location is ideal.

"It will give you the type of experience you're not going to get anywhere else," said Barefoot, who has established a scholarship fund at Campbell with his wife. "You really learn by being there and watching people do it and do it well."

In July, 95 percent of the Campbell law graduates who took the two-day North Carolina bar exam passed -- the highest rate among the five North Carolina law schools. Campbell has had the best overall passing rate in the state on the exam for the past 16 years.

Teddy Byrd, chairman of the Harnett County Board of Commissioners and a Campbell alumnus, said university officials told him Wednesday afternoon that the law school is moving.

Byrd said it would likely gain a great deal of prestige from being the only law school in North Carolina's capital. But he knows his county will miss one of the university's most visible programs.

(Staff writers Ryan Teague Beckwith, Jane Stancill, Jack Hagel and David Bracken contributed to this report.)