Officials expect Arts Building
construction to begin soon
By Ian Clift
Summer Reporter
Construction on phase one of the Visual and Performing
Arts Building project is expected to begin within the next month.
The total estimated project budget approved by
the Board of Trustees on Friday was $25,750,000, which includes the
base construction bid of $23,668,000 minus the cost of three deductions.
The deductions will leave the studio theater, acting
labs and theater support areas, as well as the music, art education
and theater offices without interior structures.
"We have, for example, a space with concrete floors,"
said Hiromi Jones, project manager for the office of university architects,
"but we don't have any of the lighting or the mechanical systems in
there. It's just a shelled space — an empty space."
Jones said, "(Construction) will have to be finished
by the fall of 2003."
David Sigman, head of the department of visual
and performing arts, said the shelled areas wouldn't affect the operations
of the building. "It just means that people will move into the building
in stages."
"We are in the process of raising private funds
to complete the parts that will be shelled," said Sigman.
The arts and design division and the dance division
will be the first of the first of the four department divisions to move
into the new building.
Jones said, "The visual and performing arts department
is scattered around campus."
Areas are located in Matthews Hall, Stewart Center,
Lambert Fieldhouse and Creative Arts buildings 1,2,4 and 5.
"We have to move the people who are in the creative
arts building out of there," she said. "The shelled areas are areas
that are (currently housed) in Matthews and Stewart Center."
The creative arts buildings will be demolished
as soon as the facilities are vacated in 2003; construction on the Millennium
Engineering Building is scheduled to begin on that location at that
time.
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