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California College Breaks Ground on Creative Arts Facility

  • By Matt Jones
  • 02/03/22

College of the Redwoods, a community college in Eureka, Calif., recently broke ground on a new creative arts building. Staff and administration gathered on Thursday, Jan. 27, to mark the beginning of construction. The new facility will measure in at 29,888 square feet and will replace the former creative arts building, which was built in 1974. The project is expected to be complete by July 2023, according to local news.

“This is a wonderful opportunity to honor our faculty and our administration—and the fact that we are going to do a great service to our students by having a state-of-the-art creative arts building in one year,” said College of the Redwoods President Keith Flamer. “A year and a half from now, we will invite you back for the grand opening of a brand-new building.”

The project is expected to cost about $28 million, and the full measure of funds will come from the state via Proposition 51. Local news reports that voters passed Proposition 51 in 2016 to allow the state to allocate up to $3 billion in bonds for new educational facilities. Another major factor in the new building’s construction is that the current creative arts facility sits on a fault line.

The new construction will include energy-efficient features like radiant heat flooring, irrigation with reclaimed rainwater, solar hot water heating and an outdoor performing arts stage. The building will also be placed in a more central location closer to the campus’s performing arts center. The building’s photography lab will also see significant upgrades to its digital and video capabilities.

“We’ll have state-of-the-art equipment, and so our faculty will have upgraded technology to take advantage of what’s going on with education now,” Flamer added. “But also, the fact that our gallery will be more modern, so the whole building will be easier for us to access. We’ll be able to move to the center of the campus. This way, our students won’t have to trek from one end to campus to the other just to access their classroom.”

The college is partnering with tBP/Architecture on the project.

About the Author

Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].

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