Importing from a working copy ... bad idea?

Hi,

We're using SVN version 1.8.19 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.8 .

For a new project we are about to undertake, I need to create a new
directory in our repository (let's call it ^/trunk/new_project).
However, most of the directories/files in the "new_project" directory
will come from other areas of the same repository that are being
consolidated into a new directory.

I was thinking of creating this new directory structure and then doing
an 'svn import'. However, that will result in the loss of the existing
logs, right?

If I want to maintain the logs of the leveraged files, is my only
recourse to use 'svn copy' to get all of the leveraged files into
"new_project"? Unfortunately, that will add a lot of complexity for the
100's of files that will need to reside under ^/trunk/new_project.

Any suggestions would be welcomed.

Regards,

-- 
Mun