With rain causing a five-week delay in construction, construction crews are working diligently to complete new facility projects while minimizing the impact on EC students, Bruce Hoering, assistant director of facilities planning and services, said.
“We are currently in the last phase of the infrastructure project,” Hoering said. This project extends water piping and electrical and data conduits to the southern region of campus.
“This project cost 12 million dollars,” President Thomas Fallo said. “The aimed completion date of this project will be June this year.”
Along with the infrastructure project, four other projects are currently underway. One closest to completion is the humanities mall landscaping and food services venue project.
“The largest of the projects is actually still upcoming and that is the Math, Business, and Allied Health Building,” Fallo said. “It is currently in the demolition and asbestos removal phase.”
This building will be four stories and approximately 105,000 square feet in size, offering a unified location for the math and business students along with nursing, respiratory therapy and radiological technology programs, Fallo said.
“The bid for this construction has not been opened yet, and hopefully we will be bringing that to the board at the March meeting,” Fallo said.
Classes that were in the Social Sciences Building, which is being modernized and reconfigured, have been moved to the Manhattan Beach Boulevard modulars.
U.S. and Native American history professor Emily Rader is one of the many faculty members whose office has been moved across campus.
“The move was necessary, so you just have to do it,” Rader said. “I figure I might as well make the best of the situation.”
However, for students the construction has made getting to classes more difficult, Julia Sue, a second year EC student, said.
Although students are not happy about the construction, they must keep in mind the grander picture, Fallo said.
“It is about passing on from generation to generation the opportunity for academic success,” Fallo said. “Someone did it for us, and it is our time to do it for somebody else.”
