Susan Szpyrka and Gary Reynolds whetted the appetites of faculty and staff interested in seeing UCCS grow during an all-campus forum Thursday.
Szpryka, senior associate vice chancellor, Administration and Finance, and Reynolds, executive director, Facilities Services, provided an update to the campus facilities master plan during an all-campus chancellor’s forum. The update included current projects as well as some with a distant eye to the future.
Current projects include the Lane Center for Academic Health Sciences, now under construction on North Nevada Avenue, as well as the expansion of Summit Village with space for 192 more students to live on campus. The expanded first-year student housing is scheduled to open in Aug. 2014.
“It will open,” Szyprka said. “It has to – we’re already selling rooms!”
Lane will be completed in Jan. 2014 and will become the new home of wellness programs associated with the Beth-El College of Nursing and Health Sciences as well as the CU Aging Center, the Gerontology Center and a branch of the CU School of Medicine
But it was a first peek at a new, $23 million 1,227 space parking garage on the campus western edge north of Austin Bluffs Parkway and west of Stanton Road near the Campus Recreation Center and Alpine Village Housing that generated excitement. The design calls for the top floor to be devoted to an artificial turf-covered playing field.
“The standard is for one acre of field area per 1,000 students,” Szpyrka said. “Right now, we’ve got zero. This is an important upgrade to our campus infrastructure.”
At 1,227 spaces, the new parking garage – the university’s second – has more space than all current surface lots, Szpyrka said. Building a multi-level garage helps save open space, an aesthetic and practical benefit.
Construction on the garage is expected to be completed by March 2014 and will be followed by a series of other construction projects. The other projects include a five-story academic office building south of the current parking garage and an expansion of the campus recreation center. The office building, a new home for the School of Public Affairs and offices for some College of Letters, Arts and Sciences faculty is expected to be completed in fall 2014. The recreation center expansion is set for completion for fall 2015.
But not content to rest on laurels for projects two years away, Reynolds got those in attendance excited by sharing early artist renderings of projects that are under study. The projects include the following
- A 500 bed expansion of student housing north of Alpine Village.
- An on-campus coffee shop near Columbine Hall on what currently is a basketball court.
- A second health and wellness-related building near the Lane Center.
- A Visual and Performing Arts complex near where the current Four Diamonds athletic Fields are located.
- A track and soccer stadium on the campus far western edge.
Previous Communique stories about various construction projects:
- Summit Village expansion continues
- Parking garage/recreation field gets regent approval
- New building will house administrative offices
- UCCS to build “National Sports, Art and Wellness Village” along North Nevada
– Photos by Tom Hutton, Video courtesy of Media Services
Leave a Reply