Students, faculty, staff and visitors who drive to school or enjoy the arts should know the following: Sections of the west parking lots are disappearing. Drivers may have noticed sections of the parking lot were blocked off. DPR Construction Inc. work trailers occupy roughly 24 parking spaces. Fences, caution tape and signs direct the flow of traffic around the trailers. All of this is in preparation for the upcoming construction of the Instructional Arts building. Trailers will be there until May 2009, the length of the Instructional Arts Facilities building project.

The Facilities Planning and Management Department decided to move DPR trailers to the west parking lots.

“When [the Instructional Arts] building goes in it will take out a lot of parking that students and faculty use up,” said Mike Miller, the department’s director (pictured). “The reason it’s going on top of the parking lot is because we could save over $1 million … It’s a huge cost savings to the total project.”

Miller did not elaborate on how the million-dollar savings will be realized.

The current site creates some driver safety concerns. The fences and blockades continually shift to fit DPR’s trucks inside the fence lines. “I haven’t heard any complaints,” Miller said. “There’s still access to drive around [the site]. Safety is our number one concern … I want feedback to make sure things are safe.”
Bidding for the project begins Dec. 11.

“Starting Dec. 17 we will fence off the entire site,” he said. “[The construction] will definitely affect student and faculty … We will make accommodations. We’re putting up a permanent building.”

Construction starts Jan. 7, 2008. The facility will be two stories tall, encompass 73,000 square feet and be LEED certified.

The Instructional Arts Facility is one of many changes at the Butte-Glenn Community College main campus scheduled for the 2007-2008 school year. The building will replace all of the Fine Arts portables that are more than 30 years old. The proposed Student General Services building next to the current Campus Center will replace all of the quads.

Planning for the Student Center renovation will begin next month. An upgrade of campus intersections will take place next summer and will include a traffic light on Durham-Pentz Road.

The ‘08-‘09 school year has its own changes, such as an upgrade of the electrical system. Network/fiber optic/telecommunications is in the planning process. Roadway lighting and a bus terminal are also in the works. Informal lawn areas lined with trees and benches take the place of the portables and quads. Campus-wide landscaping and completion of the master plan will wrap it up. In total, there will be 300,000-square-feet of new permanent buildings and no portables left on campus.

“The center of campus will be gorgeous when it’s all said and done, but there will definitely be a disruption to students and faculty,” Miller said. “There’s no doubt to that.”