Feels Like Home

Alice Campbell Alumni Center—celebrating its 20th anniversary—is as cozy as ever

Alice Campbell Alumni Center—celebrating its 20th anniversary—is as cozy as ever

By Ryan A. Ross with additional reporting by David A. Scott

It’s 9:30 on a Tuesday morning in early March, a brisk, late-winter chill in the air, and in the lobby of Alice Campbell Alumni Center more than a hundred prospective students and their families are thawing out and waiting for their Illinois Admissions visit to begin. For many, this is their very first trip to campus, and Admissions couldn’t have chosen a better starting point: a gorgeous, three-story, 54,000-square foot facility with cherrywood interiors, elegant lighting, and arched ceilings; a university heritage museum; a fully stocked library; three fireplaces; and comfortable furniture scattered throughout its public spaces. It’s downright cozy.

On this day, visitors shed their coats and bags in the cloak rooms, check in with the orange-clad students at the registration table, and begin to explore the building until their 10 a.m. call-time in the Alumni Center’s ballroom. Some walk around and marvel at the architecture or take a photo with the giant Block I sculpture in the lobby, while others warm themselves by the fireplaces or curl up with a book from the library’s shelves. But the majority of visitors gravitate towards the building’s north side, where the Richmond Family Welcome Gallery’s brightly colored, tastefully rendered exhibits tell the story of the university, through a mix of artifacts and interactive touchscreens that appeal to guests of all ages—whether they’re high school students who know nothing about the campus or returning alumni who want to share their Alma Mater with their children (and convince them to apply).

People standing in line in the Alice Campbell Alumni Center’s lobby

In the Alice Campbell Alumni Center’s lobby, prospective students and their families check in for their Illinois Admissions visit. Illinois Admissions has been renting the center’s Richmond Ballroom since 2017. (Image by Fred Zwicky)

This May, the Alice Campbell Alumni Center (ACAC) turns 20 years old, and over the past two decades, it has not only served as the University of Illinois Alumni Association’s headquarters, but also hosted more than 3,000 events for the campus, alumni, and local communities, ranging from reunions, conferences, and book talks, to weddings, retirement parties, and even a few funerals (but no births, as far as we know).

Though ACAC is now almost old enough to have a legal beer at KAMS, it’s still not as old as the UIAA’s dream to build it—a dream former executive director Lou Liay, EDM ’62, HON ’23, began to pursue shortly after he took over in 1983, and toured the University of Michigan’s alumni center. “I saw it was advantageous to have a highly visible place specifically for alumni,” Liay says, where the UIAA could host Homecoming and Commencement events and welcome returning Illini.

Throughout Liay’s tenure as executive director, he made the center a key talking point during his visits to alumni groups, building grassroots support for the idea over many years.

In 1997, Liay was finally ready to present his plan to the UIAA’s Board of Directors, who unanimously approved a feasibility study about constructing a privately funded alumni center on campus.

At that same meeting, confident that the project was in motion, Liay announced his retirement, effective the following summer. But by the time he stepped down in June 1998, the UIAA had selected a location (on Lincoln Avenue, between Illinois and Oregon streets) and an architecture firm (BLDD, of Decatur), and approved the building’s design. The facility would include not only office space for the Alumni Association (which had outgrown its quarters in the Illini Union), but also event spaces, meeting rooms, and an executive boardroom—all of which could be rented to campus, alumni, and community groups—along with two catering kitchens, a bar, and seating for hundreds of guests.

Left: Former UIAA executive director Lou Liay, shown in the Alumni Center’s lobby in 2019, was the chief advocate for building the facility. Right: Robert and Alice Campbell, the facility’s lead donors, at its dedication ceremony in 2006. (Images courtesy of UIAA; Bill Weigand)

Still, when Liay retired, the project was far from finished. Serious fundraising would not begin until 2002, and construction of the $15.7 million facility would start two years later.

When the building was dedicated on May 12, 2006—an unseasonably cold, rainy day—it was the culmination of Liay’s dream and a group effort executed by then-UIAA president Loren Taylor and a devoted cast of alumni, donors, UIAA staffers, and university fundraisers. Among the speakers that day was the real estate investment mogul Robert C. Campbell, ’54 BUS, who explained his donation to the freezing, but enthusiastic, crowd by saying, “You will be an Illini all your life, and it’s something to be proud of.”

Campbell showed his pride by serving as the building’s lead donor, along with his wife and business partner, Alice Curtis Campbell, JD ’43. The Campbells donated $5 million, or about one-third of the total, and at Robert’s request, the facility was named in Alice’s honor.

In the years that followed, the Alice Campbell Alumni Center would become one of the premier event spaces in Champaign-Urbana, with more than a dozen rentable areas named after major donors, ranging from the Jack and Marjorie Richmond Ballroom, which seats 500, to the Bresee Lounge, a mid-sized room with a bar and a fireplace that’s ideal for more intimate gatherings.

Although much has changed at ACAC over the past two decades—including the 2018 installation of the Welcome Gallery and the rental of office space by University Advancement—one thing has remained consistent: “By far, our No. 1 client is the university,” says James Runyan, ’91 AHS, MS ’12 AHS, who joined the UIAA staff in 2006 as the facility and events manager, and retired this past January. “We host U. of I. awards banquets, holiday parties, donor recognition events, student poster sessions, job fairs…. Every department on campus does something during the year.”

That was especially true during the first 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when every department on campus used the Alumni Center every day—not as a traditional event space, but as a testing facility, where Illinois faculty and staff took the university’s saliva-based SHIELD test to help ensure safe working environments.

Nearly five years later, the Alumni Center’s services have returned to normal, and today the venue hosts a wide variety of functions, including public lectures in the Richmond Ballroom, Homecoming receptions in the Bresee Lounge, luncheons on the Carmichael Balcony, campus wide job interviews in its three conference rooms, and university meetings—around a 6,000-pound, room-filling table that seats 36—in the Executive Boardroom.

Back in 1983, when Liay first began brainstorming about a U. of I. alumni center, this was exactly the type of building he dreamed of: beautiful, but accommodating; stately, but intimate; tailored to Illinois alumni, but crafted to meet the needs of all who use it.

As the Alice Campbell Alumni Center begins its next 20 years, the UIAA welcomes you to stop by and see us, whether you’re visiting before a football game, returning for Homecoming, attending a public event in the Richmond Ballroom, or planning a function of your own. It was built for you, after all.

(Images by Fred Zwicky; courtesy U. of I. STRATCOM)

Rental Facilities

Whether you’re looking to host a corporate meeting, intimate gathering or large-scale celebration, the Alice Campbell Alumni Center has the space and staff to make your function a success.

For more information about the facility’s rentable spaces:

Visit: https://go.illinois.edu/bookacac

Contact:
Colby Mumm, Director of Operations
217-333-7302
cmumm@illinois.edu