Valencia College Osceola campus prepared to open its Building 4

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Valencia College Osceola campus prepared to open its Building 4

County News

Friday, 09 November 2012 16:29

By Fallan Patterson
Staff Writer
When students arrive back to Valencia College’s Osceola Campus in January after winter break, the school’s new $45 million Building 4 will be ready for them.
Construction crews are still installing floor electrical outlets, making touch-ups to the interior walls and installing landscaping but the school’s administration expects to take ownership of the building by the end of November.
“We’re going to bring it a million or two under budget,” Lamar Powers, Valencia’s facility director and construction adjunct professor, said. “We’re on schedule and under budget.”
Kathleen Plinske, president of the Osceola and Lake Nona campuses, is planning to use all of December to move in furniture and give faculty a chance to get situated.
“We’re going to take advantage of the holiday break, which is particularly important for our science labs and library,” she said.
The building, which houses 10 new science labs and 18 new classrooms, will be home to the campus’ mathematics and science departments, the expanded library, cafeteria and bookstore, and a new student and professor support and continuing education center.
Building 4, the largest building on any Valencia campus, dwarfs the campus’ other buildings; at four stories and 150,000 square feet, its shadow casts shade northwest across half of the campus.
That placement aided Plinske’s quest to add more outdoor space for students to remain on campus between classes. This includes a second floor terrace and an outdoor classroom where a glass display will be available to write on.
“It’s those details that make it functional or not,” Plinske said.
The president was giddy as she toured the building for the first time in a couple months, excited to see some of her ideas, such as the courtyard fountain of which certain features will lead into the building’s interior, come to fruition.
Blue bricks lead from the fountain to the building’s main staircase, supported by a blue center pillar, signifying water. Soon, crews will install glass panels infused with sea grass on the outside of the stairwell.
The staircase is crowned by the massive cubola atop the building’s center; it allows in natural light and will be lit up at night, Lamar Powers said.
Photographic murals such as a gigantic periodic table for chemistry and a surfer for physics will be hung in the halls to foster students’ passion for those subjects.
“The idea with the murals is to catch students’ eyes and get them excited about science,” Plinske said. “We want to make a great visual for our students.”
Valencia has commissioned Jules Davidson, visual arts director for Osceola County School for the Arts, to design and paint a separate mural for the building’s lobby depicting images of historic Osceola County.
“It’s a thank you to the community for what they’ve made possible here,” Plinske said. “I really think (Building 4) is a game changer for Osceola County, particularly in the programs both Valencia and (the University of Central Florida) will be offering.”
With a $7 million donation by the university allowing for expanded construction of the building, the partnership expands the bachelor’s degree programs Valencia will offer students at the Osceola County campus by a dozen.
Particularly exciting to Plinske is the biomedical degree program, made possible by the 10 new science labs, as it’s the degree students need to be pre-med and go on to medical school.
“It’s an amazing opportunity for our community and dramatically expands our offerings,” she said.
Other bachelor’s degree programs the campus plans to offer include communications and business administration.
The university has a dozen faculty offices in the new building and will get first scheduling rights to 12 of the 18 new classrooms.
However, Plinske expects the combination of the new building, the expanded bachelor’s degree offerings and the UCF partnership to increase the Osceola Campus’ student population by as much as 30 percent.
With that population increase in mind, the campus’ bookstore will be moved from its crowded portable to the new building. It was constructed next to the building’s multipurpose room to allow the bookstore to increase in size during the six weeks each year the store is busy, Plinksie said.
The campus also paved 600 additional parking spaces “but we were behind even before Building 4 was build,” Plinske said. “We’ll always need to build more spaces.”
The new building is also home to the campus’ new permanent cafeteria and coffee bar. The cafeteria, currently in a portable, only offers a small menu.
“This is a really significant upgrade. Right now, it’s so limited,” Plinske said. “The fact that we’re going to be offering options is so great. We’ll be able to offer healthier choices.”
The portables vacated by the former cafeteria and bookstore will be repurposed, Plinske said, into a fitness center or another needed facility.
The library will now be double its current size and includes ideas contributed by students.
Those ideas include a variety of study spaces such as a larger “silent” room to be used by many students at once, several group study areas complete with large-screen televisions capable of being hooked up to a laptop and a coffee-house-style reading room.
“We’re going to have some really cool furniture. It’s not going to look like a library, more like a Starbucks,” Plinske said, adding the larger library will include expanded research and book offerings.
Several classrooms on the third floor overlook the library’s “Great Reading Room” through 8-foot tall windows. The room was designed acoustically to minimize noise.
The third floor hallways were designed in a zigzag pattern to allow space for students to wait for classes outside the flow of traffic and minimizes noise, Powers said.
Future functionality
Input from faculty and students to design and build a state-of-the-art facility while planning for it’s use in 50 years posed small challenges for Plinske and the crews from architect HuntonBrady and contractor Clancy and Theys.
The school wanted an abundance of electrical outlets for students to charge their many devices and to allow for classroom furniture to be rearranged as needed.
Not only are there more outlets in the walls, including in the hallways, but the classrooms, library and other spaces also have floor outlets.
The library was specifically built with a large amount of floor outlets, which will be covered by bookshelves, in the event books become more digital.
The building is also green, with lots of windows to allow in natural light; two energy recovery units on the roof that pulls air into the building while cooling it, cutting energy costs by 25 percent; and a roof draining system where the water stored will be used to flush the building’s toilets.
The campus will hold a small ribbon cutting ceremony Jan. 2 when students return to classes after winter break.
They are planning a building dedication March 13 to introduce the campus’ new addition to the community.
“It’s really going to be a showcase piece,” Plinske said.