Campus Construction Update, April 22, 2024

On this latest episode, Associate Vice Chancellor of Facilities Management Nick Katers and Vice Provost of Academic Program Development and Strategic Initiatives Mike McKenzie join University Communications' Dave Blanks in studio to discuss the renovation of Wey Hall.

Transcript

Hey folks, how's it going? I'm Dave Blanks from University Communications and this is the campus construction update. It's been a moment since I've been in studio, but it's good to be back here. And I'm joined by Nick Katers and Dr. Mike McKenzie. Mike is the... Hey guys, how's it going? I'll say hey to you first.

Nick Katers: Good morning.

Dr. McKenzie: Good, good to be here.

Nick Katers: And how are you?

Dave Blanks: I'm great. I'm doing well. So Mike McKenzie, the vice provost of Academic Program Development and Strategic Initiatives, also the designated Academic Affairs representative for the university's space committee, and the designated person from the provost leadership team who's been working with the associate vice chancellor, Mr. Nick Katers, our other guest on the academic needs related to the Wey Hall renovation. That's the topic of the day, is Wey Hall. Nick Katers, associate vice chancellor of Facilities Management. I'll just give a little information about Wey, and then we're going to address some questions about it. So Wey is the home of the Department of Art. It offers more than 100 course sections to approximately 1,400 students. The building's classrooms are used by University College for general education and for first-year seminar courses. I guess, Nick, when was Wey built? Wey's been there for a little while.

Nick Katers: Right, yeah, that's exactly why we're talking about this today. So Wey Hall was built in 1976. It was the oldest building that the university had that had never been touched by a holistic renovation, so it was approaching end of life on several critical systems to include the electrical and plumbing. The bathrooms were out of date. The elevator was probably not functional about half the time, and there was no fire suppression or sprinkler system in the building. Now there is a fully functional alarm system, but given all of those faults and the impending loss of some of those critical systems, we judged it was time to give Wey a full comprehensive renovation.

Dave Blanks: Right. Yeah. Well that makes sense. Yeah, 50 years is a long time and it's had smaller stuff done, like you said, but not, what was your terminology for it? Comprehensive.

Nick Katers: Comprehensive renovation, essentially where we gut the whole thing and start over.

Dave Blanks: So that's what we're getting into now and we will talk about that in a little bit, but I understand there have been recent safety concerns about Wey, so if y'all would like to speak to those, maybe?

Nick Katers: During spring break, we had to do some destructive testing of the floors between the first and second floor. So we chose to do that where the students weren't there. The contractor ended up drilling some bores through the concrete deck of the second floor, and a couple of pieces of concrete fell. One fell into an unoccupied office at the time, and some other smaller pieces fell onto the ceiling tiles above one of the first floor labs. At no time did any of the concrete fall through an occupied area.

Dave Blanks: Yeah. So that was a big concern for people and there were some different storylines going around out there, but thank you for clarifying that. So the renovation currently going on, when did it start?

Nick Katers: Well, we've been working on the planning for about two years now, but we really started last summer by closing down the second and third floors. We decided because of a lack of similar type lab and industrial arts classrooms to keep the first floor open for this academic year while we work to find alternative spaces. But for the most part, the renovations are proceeding as scheduled on the second and third floor. The third floor is actually now starting to put new walls up. It's really looking pretty good.

Dave Blanks: So was it completely gutted?

Nick Katers: The second and third floors have been completely gutted. All the internal walls, all the bathrooms, everything was essentially pulled down so that we could start over. We had to run new electrical, new plumbing, new IT systems, HVAC improvements, fire suppression systems. All of those things are being added. And we're taking, similar to what we did with Sanford, we're taking the old internal elevator and moving it to the outside to be able to buy some of that space back for program area.

Dave Blanks: Gotcha. Yeah, it looks cool on Sanford. I like the visual of that. Maybe Mike, I don't know if you could address this, but are faculty and staff still in Wey right now?

Dr. McKenzie: So there are classes on that first floor, and those are those studio kind of classes, think your huge kilns and wood shops and metal shops. But the second and third floor are completely vacant, and the offices have been also vacated already. And those people have found homes across campus, a lot of them are in East Hall during the renovation. So the only active place right now in Wey Hall are those first floor studio spaces that, as Nick mentioned, are very unique. When Sanford shut down, it was just a matter of using our class software to move those classes to other locations across campus. And that works fine if you just need a classroom of 25 people, but when you need kilns and saws and those kinds of things, those classrooms don't exist. And so the decision was made in consultation with the academic leadership of the college, and consultation with the faculty, to keep the first floor open this year because it is the most unique space from an academic perspective we have on campus, I would say.

Dave Blanks: Okay. How is App addressing the student learning experience? So students are... If they've had to move out of Wey and faculty and staff as well, where are they working now?

Dr. McKenzie: So again, the studios are still open in Wey, so they have had access to all the equipment that they would've had under any other condition prior to this semester. Some of the other classes have been moved to East Hall. We have a class that Turchin has been nice enough to offer some space up. So if it's more of a traditional class, we've been able to move it really anywhere. If it is a very art-specific class where art is... They leave a trail sometimes.

Dave Blanks: My dad was an artist, so yes. My mom will attest to that.

Dr. McKenzie: Right. So a lot of those are in East Hall because we're not as concerned with paint and materials getting on the floor, the walls, as we would be if say I placed them in the College of Business for example.

Dave Blanks: Right. Yeah. Okay, I see what you mean. You did mention East is a space that's being utilized. Can y'all talk a little bit about safety inspections that have occurred in Wey, in East? I understand there have been some, maybe Nick you can handle that?

Nick Katers: That. Yeah, sure. Let me start with East. So East Hall, obviously a former residence hall built in 1952, built before the Americans with Disabilities Act was put in place. So there are some challenges that we have worked to address in East Hall. We're lucky to have three different level entrances into East Hall, and we've been able to accommodate every request that has come in. East Hall, again is an older building on campus. It has steam heat that's able to keep it climate controlled during the winter. What it doesn't have is a air conditioning system, and we still have a number of older buildings on campus that do not have air conditioning systems. So I'm happy that we've had a relatively mild spring so far, but East Hall was slated to be removed from inventory in the next couple of years. We had stopped using it as a residence hall, because we had the nice new beautiful residence halls on West Campus, and this provided us an opportunity to have some swing space while we were renovating both Wey and Duncan Hall.

And so it's hard to take two academic buildings offline at the same time, but we were lucky enough to get this money from the legislature, so we had to move with what we had before prices went up too much. As far as safety inspections go, we've done multiple safety inspections at both East Hall and Wey Hall. At Wey Hall, we have ongoing daily inspections by Meter Construction, who's the general contractor. There are weekly inspections by the Office of Planning Design and Construction. And we also have an independent safety consultant that has been commissioned by Meter Construction to do that.

Addressing some of the issues with the fire system, the Office of the State Fire Marshal came out on 1 April and conducted a holistic review of a previous inspection they had done in the fall. They passed the system. The fire alarm system is fully functional for all the studio spaces on the first floor, and they had no recommendations. We've had some internal inspections continue. We've had OSHA inspections that have all come through, and really the only findings that they have are to keep the access and egress areas clear. Sometimes we'll have stuff, not just from the contractor but from the students, to allow their pieces of work that they're working on there, sometimes that'll accumulate outside of the studio areas, and we just have to keep reinforcing that those access egress areas need to be kept clear. But right now there are no findings from the Office of the State Fire Marshal or the OSHA inspectors.

Dave Blanks: So Nick, you mentioned it, the state legislature allocated quite a bit of money for the upgrade of Wey to bring it to a state-of-the-art experience for our art students. So how much did we receive?

Nick Katers: 24.1 million is our current level of funding. Yeah, I would've told you when that was allocated in 2019, 2020, that that would've been more than enough, but we're still struggling with some of the inflationary hikes that have gone up over the last couple of years to bring it in on budget. So the original allocation for Wey Hall was 19 million. We asked for an inflationary adjustment, which gave us additional money from the legislature, of an additional 4 million, and then we added some of our own internal carry-forward dollars to bring it up to its total amount. So we have continually adjusted to account for the inflationary impact on building construction. We're going to have the first floor, the third floor are going to be completely finished. The second floor will be mostly finished, and then it'll be completed by App State facilities and still opening on time.

Dave Blanks: Great. So well, what are the upgrades? What's this place going to look like, and when is the completion date?

Nick Katers: So the completion date is scheduled right now for the summer of 2025. That's a pretty conservative estimate. We're making great progress right now, but typically we don't reopen buildings during the school year just because there's so much that has to be moved in and out. So we're continuing to move through the renovation process with good efficiency right now. Obviously you can see the most major change is the elevator towers that are going to be pushed out to the outside of the building. We've moved some of the mechanical spaces to a new block expansion area outside the building, and we're also putting an external kiln pad outside of the building so we don't have to have the high heat producing items inside the studio spaces. Along with the normal life health safety issues, we're going to be upgrading all of the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, HVAC systems. There will be a fully functional sprinkler and fire suppression system, state-of-the-art IT upgrades will go in, as well as a new suite of furniture and equipment for most of the spaces.

Dave Blanks: Sounds great. So one of the main concerns that students have right now, I feel like, is where are they going in the fall? In three weeks, the students will be out of Wey. So Mike, what's that going to look like? What's next?

Dr. McKenzie: Right. So this has been a really long process, and Nick and I have worked together with both of our offices repeatedly to really examine every possible solution to find homes for studios. We looked at several off-campus facilities. Honestly, the biggest problem we have with off-campus facilities are the permitting of the use of those buildings, renovations in those buildings and AppalCart access to those buildings as well. And as you can imagine, when you're only doing something temporarily, in this case for a year or less, how much money do you want to spend to upgrade a building that's not even yours, to then move right out?

Dave Blanks: That is a challenge, yeah.

Dr. McKenzie: So that didn't work. We looked at some of our existing spaces off campus, such as the Sofield building, for example.

Dave Blanks: What's been going on in there? I'm sorry to interrupt.

Dr. McKenzie: Yeah, so Sofield building is already a Fine and Applied Arts space. They do a lot of research. STBE is out there, and it's also where the solar car is. And so they do have some of that kind of equipment and it has that studio feel to it. And so we did examine that, and what I would say where we landed with Sofield, a couple issues did come up where the parking is limited for an off-campus building. And so that was an issue. AppalCart access in theory stops at eight o'clock, and these studio artists have to do a lot of outside of class project time, and eight o'clock may sound late, but they have a lot of projects where they work incredibly late and sometimes traffic with the AppalCart, and offsetting every class in Fine and Applied Arts by 30 minutes to the rest of campus, it was a possible solution, but it was going to be more disruptive than where we landed.

And where we landed is basically space that already exists on campus. And so most Fine and Applied Arts studio art will be located in the Edwin Duncan Octagon for this upcoming year. And the things about the Octagon where we landed that we really like, number one, it is on campus. And speaking to someone from academic affairs, when you start spreading out faculty all over the town of Boone, it loses that department feel. You don't get to interact with your colleagues, there isn't that cross interdisciplinary work that can occur. So having them in the Octagon has an advantage of keeping them on the core of campus. Obviously, having them on the core of campus, the security, the parking, all of those things are already there because Duncan's part of campus. And so, the Octagon is not undergoing renovation and so if you've ever walked through the Octagon, it really is a big wide open space.

And again, these studio arts need bigger spaces. They don't work in traditional classrooms. And so the Octagon allows us that kind of flexibility to move most of these programs in. We've done one walkthrough with the studio art faculty already. We're doing a second walkthrough soon. And that walkthrough is really just to game plan exactly what goes in what corner. And we're working with Nick's folks to properly make sure electrical systems and water systems and ventilation, because some of the projects, they do produce things. And so we're making sure from a safety perspective we're where we need to be. But I think Duncan far and away was the best option for, I think, our current students, is going to be the least disruptive for them, the least disruptive for the faculty, and really the least disruptive for campus by already keeping them on our main campus, so.

Dave Blanks: So when we're talking to Octagon, are we talking the lowest level as well, like the parking level?

Dr. McKenzie: So most things will be located in the classroom portion of the Octagon-

Dave Blanks: The actual... Okay, okay.

Dr. McKenzie: But to your point, there will be things that are located adjacent to the Octagon where we need to produce sparks and have, again, ventilation and things like that. But no, most of the things will be located in the Octagon, but to your point, when we say the Octagon, I would say we're really talking about the entire footprint of the Octagon.

Dave Blanks: Gotcha. Okay. All right, cool. Well that's interesting to know. And as somebody who parked there pretty frequently, I'm glad to see it back in use and for a good purpose. So that's great to know. Okay, well, so the Octagon's a great space. Is the entire department going to be located in there? It seems kind of small.

Dr. McKenzie: Right, so most things will be in the Octagon, but we've been meeting with Fine and Applied Arts and we have a couple additional spaces that will meet their needs. One being an existing Fine and Applied Arts building of Harper. And while Harper does not currently host art, it does host things like sustainable technology in the built environment, sustainable development, and there are some construction type applied design equipment in there. And so there's an opportunity for them to share some of those spaces. We also have worked across units. We have a large space in Holmes that is available for printing or some other large-scale machine if need be. And we also have, again, worked with the Turchin Center and they've identified two spaces we can use as classrooms. And so like I said, we are still meeting with the departments to do a final walkthrough of Octagon to figure out exactly what we can fit in there safety-wise and space-wise. And then the overflow would move to either Holmes Center, Turchin or Harper as needed. But everything is going to be kept on main campus.

Dave Blanks: And we should clarify that it's not the entire Edwin Duncan that's being used for this, it's just the section that is the Octagon. I think we've probably made that clear. But yeah, so Wey's going to be pretty awesome. I've seen the renderings that are on the future site, that's appstate.edu/future, you can go on there, you can see what you guys have planned and get more information. It's going to be state-of-the-art, it's going to be awesome. And there's some upheaval right now, but it's not permanent.

Dr. McKenzie: Right. I graduated from App actually in 1999, and I was an athletic training major in varsity gym, and I looked across the street and there was Holmes Center getting ready to open up for my academic program when I left.

Dave Blanks: Man.

Dr. McKenzie: And I think this is just that. We are fully renovating that building for the first time, and it is going to be set up for the future for decades after this. And I think the studio space is going to be what the students need. The classroom space is going to be what the students need. The building's going to be safer. And really what I think of the most exciting things around there, it's going to have the feel of an art building. I don't know that it has that feel right now, other than students have very creatively decorated Wey Hall in ways that they see fit. But I think we're going to have opportunity to display their work in a different way. And it's just going to be a building for a 2024 education in art moving forward. And I'm really excited about that. And I think our future arts students and our current art students will too.

Dave Blanks: Absolutely. Well, Nick and Mike, thank you both so much for being with me today. It's great to have the campus construction update back. Great to have you back in studio. Nick, you've been here before. Mike, it's your first time. But guys, thank you so much. And if people want to get more information, of course, like I just said, you can go to the appstate.edu/future site. Thank you both very much.

Nick Katers: Thanks.

Dr. McKenzie: Thank you.