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| Construction on the new Chico State physical science building as of May 12. |
An impossible sight to avoid on the Chico State campus has been the construction taking place next to Meriam Library since last spring. Reaching four floors this month, the building is still set for a 2020 finish in time for fall classes.
“Once the building is built in fall of 2020, we’re going to have a state of the art building with great resources for students and nice spaces for faculty,” Associate Dean of the College of Natural Sciences Steven Robinow said. “The classrooms will be nice. You can move the tables around, but not all the classrooms will have this. We also have some pretty neat spaces for chem labs and nice research spaces for students and faculty.”
According to Kris Sanders, the property manager of facilities management and services at Chico State, classrooms will have proximity to Chico creek, a lot of windows up front and a stairway (much like the one in Meriam Library) in the center. All at a cost of $101 million.
Construction slowed this spring when the state fire marshal took too long to review building permits, and for a few weeks construction had to stop due to building codes needed for fire marshal approvals. This has not slowed the mid-2020 finish date.
The building is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified silver, the minimum requirement for Chico State buildings.
“LEED is a scoring system based on sustainability measure. We are one of the campuses that require a LEED silver minimum,” Associate Vice President of Facilities Management and Services Mike Guzzi said. “You like to go for LEED because it sounds good, but in truth, I can still attain all the sustainability goals without giving LEED a million bucks to tell me I did a good job. I support LEED, but I wish we could use that million dollars for more solar panels.”
Chico State’s longest standing outreach and support program will also get some new space in the Physical Science building.
LEED certifications have gotten stricter, and being certified silver requires more steps than it used to. Mainly, more measures for sustainability have to be met before certification can be given.
The K-12 Education Support program will be getting a new space in the building and will be joining the geology, chemistry and physics programs. Faculty and courses from Butte Hall will be put into the old science building as Butte Hall is set to have some fixes made, too.
This cycle of moving building staffs around will continue with Glenn Hall after Butte Hall has been renovated, according to Brandi L. Aranguren, the director of K-12 Education Support.
A good amount of progress is set to be done by the time classes begin in the fall of 2019.
“We are going to be done with pouring all the concrete decks, all the steel will be up, all the fireproofing sprayed, installing all our inserts for hanging all of our equipment,” said Daniel Bailey, project engineer. “Then we will pour the decks and start laying out framing and all that. We will probably be putting up walls and starting roughing the building.”
For a virtual tour of the building CLICK HERE.
-- Ricardo Tovar