Campus to get two new buildings

By Theodore Geigle

The Scene staff

Hospitality and transportation are the big winners at Forest Park in a capital improve­ment plan that was unveiled by St. Louis Community College officials recently.

Chancellor Jeff Pittman and Chief Oper­ating Officer Hart Nelson came to campus announce that the college will construct two new buildings, demolish one building and renovate other buildings.

Officials expect to clear and prepare sites this spring and start construc­tion this summer.

“There’s going to be challenging times during construction on campus, but once it’s finished, things will be better than before,” Nelson said.

STLCC Transformed is the name of the capital improvement plan for all four cam­puses. It’s expected to cost $456.5 million.

The money was made available by Propo­sition R, which district voters passed in Au­gust 2021. It raised property taxes to pay for college upgrades and improvements.

Pittman and Nelson held a “town hall meeting” on Feb. 16 in Café East at Forest Park to explain what will be happening in the coming months. About 20 faculty and staff members attended, but no students.

Hospitality and enrollment

STLCC Transformed calls for a new Hos­pitality and Enrollment Center to be con­structed south of the Center for Nursing and Health Sciences at Forest Park.

It will house culinary arts, baking and pas­try arts and other classes associated with the hospitality studies program on the second floor.

The program is now based in the Hospitality Studies Center, south of the Student Center.

“We’re stoked,” said Ellen Piazza, chair of culinary arts and baking and pastry arts. “(The current) building doesn’t really serve its purpose. It wasn’t made to accommodate for the future.

“We’ll be getting more pieces, modern equip­ment … And another thing people don’t think about often is presenta­tion. If you come to my hotel and the doorknob is sticky, you won’t want to come to my hotel.

“Same as if you went into a restaurant and it had a gross mop smell. You wouldn’t want to eat there. So we’re exceptionally pleased to be getting a new and more modern build­ing.”

The first floor of the new building will house an enrollment center, including the fi­nancial aid office, cashier’s office and coun­seling services.

“The intent is for students to have a cen­tral point where they can have most things taken care of,” Nelson said.

Construction of the $39 million Center for Nursing and Health Sciences in 2019 included creation of a landscaped plaza to the south with a sculpture consisting of 10 giant “light walls.”

That sculpture will be moved to make room for the new Hospitality and Enroll­ment Center.

“We do not own the light walls,” Nelson said. “They belong to Gateway Arts Foun­dation, which has generously let this cam­pus use them, and we want to keep them around.

“Our intent is to move them to a location that is accessible and cool.”

Transportation and logistics

The other new building on the Forest Park campus will be a Transportation and Logis­tics Center on the northwest corner of the in­tersection of Wise Avenue and South Drive, where a parking lot is now.

That building will house the automotive technology department, diesel technology and truck driving.

The new garage will have large bays to accommodate not only vehicles but also big trucks. The old garage in the West Wing, formerly G tower, will probably be used for long-term storage, according to Nelson.

“Excited” is the way Joe Jackson, chair of the automotive technology department, de­scribed his feelings about the new building.

“I think it’ll increase our useable space by about three times,” he said. “Right now, we only have seven bays and five lifts, which limits us heavily space-wise.

“Diesel would be brought in and combined in the same building. (This) will get more em­ployer engagement, and it will help students as well because a lot of students go from auto to diesel and from diesel to auto, and it will really help if they’re in the same place.”

Demolition and renovation

Officials estimate that the new Hospital­ity and Enrollment Center will be open for spring semester 2025.

After the opening, plans call for the existing Hospitality Studies Center to be demolished to make way for more green space and parking.

The building was constructed in 1999, making it much newer than the original For­est Park campus, which opened in the 1960s. Yet officials refer to it as “antiquated.”

“Frankly this building didn’t hold up too well,” Piazza said.

Nelson wasn’t in his current position when STLCC officials decided that the Hospitality Studies Center needed to be demolished, but he offered the following explanation to The Scene:

“What was told to me was that the space was built with a very limited budget and made with kitchens in mind, which are very specialized and difficult to convert. The building isn’t flexible and wasn’t built to the quality we want in our buildings.”

STLCC Transformed also includes money for renovation of existing buildings at For­est Park.

That includes the kitchen in the former cafeteria and other parts of the Student Center, although officials haven’t specified what will go into spaces now occupied by the financial aid office, cashier’s office and counseling services.

The cost of the new Hospitality and Enroll­ment Center is estimated at $38 million. Offi­cials hope to bring that down to $32 million.

“We’re a bit over budget,” Nelson said.

“The usual process is, we contact the con­struction designers and ask them how much it will cost to build it, and then they will bring us back a number, and then our pro­cess is to see if we can make it fit into the budget with value engineering.”

The cost of the new Transportation and Lo­gistics Center is estimated at $50.1 million. Like the Hospitality and Enrollment Center, it’s expected to be open by spring 2025.

Nelson cautioned that supply chain issues could change that timeline.

“Some of the building materials, surpris­ingly, doors and glass, take a very long time to get in, almost 18 months, which is how long we’re expecting construction to take, so we’re ordering them early on to avoid waiting on that in the future.”

The cost of the Hospitality Studies Center demolition and renovation of other buildings at Forest Park is estimated at $10.5 million.

Officials plan to hold more town hall meetings on campuses to give updates on STLCC Transformed, and they hope to see more students attend and give feedback.

“We’ll keep updating our website with plans and funding,” Nelson said. “We want to be open about our plans. This is only pos­sible because of local taxpayers participat­ing in Proposition R.”