With the American River College fall semester now a month in, multiple ARC campuses have seen a handful of construction projects start.
The largest-scale construction project on ARC’s main campus is the reconstruction of the Technical Education building. This construction has led to a part of a road being closed off.
“We have to tie into the hydronic system and other utilities that are there,” said Margaret Lednicky, director of administrative services at ARC. “It went down last semester, and I recall that they mentioned [the road] would be closed for most of fall.”
The reconstruction of the Tech Ed building has also closed off a portion of the Myrtle Street parking lot, due to the construction workers needing an area in which to operate.
“For any construction job you have to have a laydown area and [the parking lot] is an area that is primarily for the construction team,” Lednicky said. “Sometimes it looks like there is nobody in there, but really in fact, that area is set for the phasing of the building.”
The new Technical Education building will be able to do more than just house the career education programs, such as welding and automotive.
“It’s also going to have office space and various other rooms for both instruction, offices and for students,” said Kaitlyn Collignon, ARC’s communication and public information officer. “It’s an exciting building for us to have.”
ARC’s main campus isn’t the only campus seeing construction. The ARC Natomas Center will eventually receive more classroom space.
“They will have both labs and lecture hall classrooms. The current Natomas Center does not have wet lab space where you can do certain types of sciences,” Collignon said. “This will expand our ability to offer certain things and expand our opportunity to do dual enrollment with Inderkum, which is right next door.”
ARC athletics is seeing its fair share of construction projects at the moment as well.
“We have a streaming project,” Lednicky said. “We’re putting in infrastructure so that our athletic department can stream video as per the 3C2A requirements.”
Additionally, the ARC softball team is getting themselves a new field that is expected to finish up in October.
“We are changing our softball field and turning it into synthetic turf,” Lednicky said. “That was part of one of our water savings measures that facilities management helped set up for us.”
Despite the uncertainties and turmoil surrounding the Davies Hall closure, none of the ongoing construction projects are expected to be affected by the closure of the long-standing building.
