Though the UNC law school's move to Carolina North is still years away, a handful of academic departments are already jockeying to claim some of the space the school will leave behind.

It isn't often that a facility as large as the 165,000-square-foot Van Hecke-Wettach building comes available on the main campus.

"It's a very good opportunity," said Bruce Runberg, UNC's associate vice chancellor for facilities planning. "They don't come along regularly."

With enrollment spiking in the College of Arts & Sciences, UNC officials may create a social science "cluster" in that building, grouping several departments that often work together, said Karen Gil, UNC's senior associate dean for social sciences. Though nothing has been decided, the departments with the most undergraduates and in need of the most additional space are political science, history, economics and sociology, Gil said. The law school building could house three or even four departments, depending on how the building is re-worked, Gil said.

"They're pretty much at capacity," Gil said of those departments, many of which are now in Hamilton Hall. "If we have enrollment growth and grow the faculty, there's really no room."

Van Hecke-Wettach was built in 1968 and a large expansion was completed in 1999. It shows its age at times. It was evacuated one August day in 2007 when a section of upper-floor brick veneer cracked and pulled away from an inner wall. There were no injuries.

It will likely require significant renovations, particularly to the library, which wouldn't serve a useful purpose for other departments but could be re-made as office or laboratory space.

One potential stumbling block: The law school building isn't in the middle of the action; it is on Ridge Road next to the School of Government, close to some residence halls but a good hike away from most other academic buildings. And there aren't many direct foot paths for students to get to their other classes efficiently.

"Can students get back and forth with 10 minutes between classes?" Gil asked. "Those are things we haven't looked at yet. Many students might actually like classes there because it's close to the South Campus dorms."

In October 1999, the law school celebrated the opening of its $15 million addition with a grand party and a special guest speaker: then-Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. That bash celebrated the end of a long and occasionally bumpy construction process saddled by builder delays and cost overruns. The expanded building was hailed then as a solution to overcrowding so extreme that members of student organizations, which were in the process of growing from about a dozen to about 50 now, had no place to meet.

"Those students were hanging out in hallways like patients in an emergency room ward," recalled Jack Boger, a longtime faculty member and the school's current dean.

That expansion was needed because the school was growing; it had plans to expand its faculty from 43 to 58, so the renovation was essentially a stop-gap. Since, the school spent more time looking for new space, responding to rapidly changing methods in which law was being taught.

"The traditional model had been 100 students sitting in a tiered classroom," Boger said. "That has changed a lot. At any moment, you might need four or five classrooms of 20 rather than one with 100."

A consultant proposed another addition, to the tune of about $92 million. It was that costly, Boger said, because the original building -- the old section -- would require a great deal of modernizing. The second floor of that old section sits upon the first floor, where the old book stacks are. There, the aisles are too narrow to suit the Americans with Disabilities Act, so if any renovations are done to that library, the first-floor stacks would have to be widened, Boger said.

The result: "They'd have to take the second floor out," he said.

A new facility at Carolina North is expected to cost about $95 million. When university leaders offered up the space at the future campus, it took some convincing.

"There is a very strong emotional attachment to the main campus," Boger said.

But there were some obvious positives too good to pass up, he said. A new building is far preferable to another long and disruptive expansion; as a bonus, in going the Carolina North route, the law school would jump up the university's priority list, from the 16th spot to number 3.

The recession has slowed university construction across the state, so the new facility's January 2010 target construction start date isn't firm, Boger said. But once it starts, the 275,000-square-foot building is expected to be ready in two years.