After 10 years in the planning and thanks to funding from local and state bonds, a new 90,000-square-foot, $50 million College Services building is set to rise up the hill beyond the cafeteria.
This site is located below the parking structure and will become the home of the largest building on campus. Once the new building is ready, all student service departments will move there, as well as all labs and some classrooms.
When the new building is ready, the Admission and Records department will relocate there.
According to Nelson Oliveira, director of facilities for GCC, the first floor of the new building will include the Disabled Student Programs and Services offices, open computer lab services and creative writing lab.
It will laso house Speech, ESL classes, and the journalism lab.
The second floor will contain classrooms, two anthropology labs, the culinary arts department with a full kitchen and offices. The third floor will house the admission and records office, the financial aid office, Career Center, Extended Opportunity Programs and Services, and the Assessment Center.
The Campus Development Committee has already started working on a related project called Secondary Effects. This project will help to figure out what to do with the empty spaces vacated when moving to the new building.
but the committee is working on recombination.
The Los Robles building is going to come down on Oct. 8 as it is positioned directly in the footprint of the new building, but the building will not be torn down in the usual way.
Prior to the demolition GCC police are working with the Glendale police and fire departments to schedule the use of the Los Robles building for a mock entry event. They will blow the building up while they will be training. They will do some practice of door breaking, window breaking, force entrance staff and more. It will last for about the half of the day.
Project manager Karl Aldridge is excited about the demolition event,
“You don’t get to use real life type experience too often, so I think it will be a fun thing to watch. This an exciting opportunity for the college to work closely with some of the communities finest,” he said.
During the construction, parking lot A will remain closed for the entire two years and will reopen when the new building is complete. One portion of the elevator tower will be closed and fenced off later this week, which might cause a little congestion down through the pathway coming out of the elevator.
“There is going to be a lot of noise over the next four months,” Aldridge said. “I don’t think that the noise is going to impact our students.”
“Some big demolition already started last week which was a removal of some of the concrete. That alone is quite noisy but we are going to try to do that early in the morning, so that we can accommodate some of the classes,” Aldridge said.
The construction hours are from 7 a.m. until 4 p.m. After Christmas break there will be 40 to 60 people working on side every day.
The entire building’s walls and subfloors are all concrete. It will take about 18 month to build just that portion of the building. The air-conditioning system is all under the floor, which is very unique to this area and has never been seen before in a college building.
Aldridge said the trees that are being cut down will be replaced by a new beautiful landscape system with hardscape and decorative concrete.
“Basically, almost every tree we tear down we replace with another tree. It is something that is required within the city and within the campus,” Aldridge said.
The trees are not just being removed, they are being replanted with new plants that are more accommodating to the new building and to the surrounding area.
The groundbreaking ceremony will take place Oct. 21 at 4 p.m. at a designated, tented area. This event will include local news, local and district dignitaries along with board members and city officials. There will also be a small catered event hosted by the contractor, Mallcraft, Inc., and NTD, the architectural firm.
Aldridge said, “The project is running on schedule and a successful completion is expected in late August, 2015.”
“The college is really willing to work, move forward to accommodate students and make some new beautiful and innovative changes on campus,” said Aldridge.
