Campus Construction Update, June 14, 2022

Associate Vice Chancellor for Finance and Operations Matt Dull shares updates concerning construction projects on the west side of Appalachian's campus, including details on the landscaping and interior finishing touches to New River Hall.

Transcript

Dave Blanks: Hey folks. This is Dave Blanks from University Communications back with the campus construction update. And here's Matt Dull. Hey Matt.

Matt Dull: Hey, hey.

Dave Blanks: What's hup?

Matt Dull: Back in the studio.

Dave Blanks: I said "What's hup." I was combining what's happening and what's up. Yes. You're back in the studio.

Matt Dull: Back in the studio. Beautiful sunny Boone day.

Dave Blanks: Man. Yeah. We were talking, Orientation is happening right now and there's people walking around campus. And I was like, "Man, we got you a hook, line, and sinker today." What did you call it? You called it a...

Matt Dull: I said it's a chamber of commerce day here in Boone.

Dave Blanks: It's the kind of day that when, you may be gone from Boone, but when you reminisce, if you spend a summer up here.

Matt Dull: That's right.

Dave Blanks: Yeah. This is the day you're thinking about...

Matt Dull: This is the day. Yeah.

Dave Blanks: Yeah. And here we are in a windowless room, separated by glass. That's right. Yep. But yeah, I'm glad you're here. Glad to see another human down here. It's nice. Have a visitor. Well, construction goes on, sir.

Matt Dull: That's right. Yeah. Construction moves on.

Dave Blanks: What are they building? 400 why I can't even remember the name of it.

Matt Dull: New River Hall.

Dave Blanks: New River Hall. I'm just kidding. I did know it was New River Hall. New River looking darn good. Lot of landscape and stuff going on out there. Trees and bushes.

Matt Dull: Yeah. Trees and bushes and all sorts of little shrubs and plants that are out there.

Dave Blanks: I don't want no shrubs. That's what the song says. Right.

Matt Dull: I'm pretty sure this is what they intended.

Dave Blanks: I think they messed it up, but I fixed it.

Matt Dull: This is a Weird Al podcast.

Dave Blanks: Needed a little TLC and I gave that to it. Yeah. It's looking like a lot of stuff's happening out there. So where do you want to start with New River?

Matt Dull: Yeah, we can start, let's start outside. Yeah. Let's start with trees. Now, so yeah, really focusing in now on finishing up all of the last little bit of concrete work. So sidewalks, there's a few stair, right at the stairs, right in the front of the building. They'll frame those and they'll be pouring those stairs later this week, all the sight lighting, getting all of the Sternberg lamps, getting all of the Cobrahead lights out in the parking lot area, getting that all installed. That's all happening in the next few weeks, connecting the generator and getting it tested. That's wrapped up and...

Dave Blanks: That's got to be a honking big generator.

Matt Dull: They're pretty massive. And they're covering, so all these buildings have a fire pump in the building. That's part of the emergency system in the building where like the sprinkler system where just in case there's not enough water pressure coming from town of Boone, it boosts it to the appropriate water pressure for both the sprinkler system, as well as if the fire department, when they actually connect to the building, they can get water from the building and fight fires. And so that fire pump helps get the pressure to where it needs to be to appropriately fight the fire. All these buildings have that fire pump and we put those on that generator backup. Hey, if the power goes out because of a fire you or you shut the power off in the building or something like that, you always have at least the generator backup on that fire pump to continue firefighting.

Dave Blanks: Gotcha. All right. So the generator's not as beautiful as the landscaping stuff, but quite necessary.

Matt Dull: Those are in, see now working on another equally beautiful thing is the dumpster corral. But if you remember the little dumpster corral that's even over at Thunder Hill, it's nice, or whatever it's called, I don't know what you would call it.

Dave Blanks: I like that. We'll go with that.

Matt Dull: It's where we corral the dumpsters over in the dumpster corral. But even that, it's got the nice, beautiful rock work on it and nice brick and the green roofs. And so it'll look nice for that area and really kind of spruce up that little back area of the building. So dumpster pad's in. Landscaping's going in, so all the trees and...

Dave Blanks: Do you know the trees?

Matt Dull: Yeah. So I think there's, gosh, I can't remember exactly. I think there's some hawthorns, which is a local variety of tree. I think there's some types of maples. We used have a lot of ginkgos, ginkgos do really well up here. There's a lot of ginkgos actually in the stadium parking lot. A lot of those islands...

Dave Blanks: Those leaves, they hang in there for a while.

Matt Dull: Oh yeah. Those beautiful gold leaves too, when they change. It's a nice little mix there. Trying to find drought resistant plants. So plants that don't, we don't irrigate up here. Right? So we've got to have the types of plants that will be able to survive couple of weeks without water in the summer like we're having right now, so you got to have some drought resistant plants because we don't irrigate on campus.

Matt Dull: And that they're the right tolerance in terms of temperature. We're in a really unique zone in this one little area, more similar to, further up north than really anywhere else in North Carolina. Landscaping that is somewhat native, if not native to this area, that does well in this area, goes well with our temperatures and our climate. And it doesn't require too much intervention after you get through their initial growing setting kind of process.

Dave Blanks: Cool

Matt Dull: On the interior of the building really wrapping up nicely, all of the student units are completely done, ready to start moving in furniture here in the next few weeks, which is exciting. It's a nice milestone to be getting ready to move in furniture, especially a month and a half or so before students start moving in, so good feeling there.

Matt Dull: And then really try to finish up that center amenity area, lobby area in New River Hall. Toraso is down, all the storefront glass and doors, and the drywall is in. Ceiling tiles are in now. All the above the ceiling inspections are done. So really getting close to wrapping that section up, which really is the last finishing work in the whole building that needs to be done. Most mechanical work is done in the building. And we are now getting ready to start the commissioning process, where we bring in a team, an external team, to the project that you contract with. They run the systems in their paces. Do they start up how they're supposed to be? Are they performing how they're supposed to be? And they'll literally go room to room to room and see how the thermometer is working in that particular room and is the machine...

Dave Blanks: Each room?

Matt Dull: Yeah. They'll go through all the rooms and they'll do separate testings on every single HVAC equipment that's in the building. And you might be talking, in a building like New River, gosh, there's probably four or 500 different pieces of mechanical equipment related to the HVAC that'll have to be tested and run through the paces.

Dave Blanks: Yowza!

Matt Dull: We're doing a hundred percent tests. So yeah. And just making sure that it really is ready for students. And then it's operating at that maximum efficiency that we'd want, trying to create as energy efficient of a building as you can. And you really have to do that from the get go. It's not like you can't make some changes later, but once the building is occupied, it's really hard to get into these spaces and do any tweaking or testing or management of any of these systems because students are there. And we really don't like, once students move in, we really don't like to do too many kind of invasive things in the building just because it's their home. This is home for them.

Dave Blanks: Nice. Where else?

Matt Dull: Yeah, IT equipment's installed in the building.

Dave Blanks: It already is?

Matt Dull: So yeah, it's already installed. We've got...

Dave Blanks: On the ball. Nice job IT.

Matt Dull: Yeah. Security cameras are getting ready to come in. A lot of the wireless access points are installed, are being installed. Elevator inspections happening this week with State Department of Labor. So that's getting ready to be hopefully wrapped up here this week. So yeah. Lots going on. Lots of little finishing touches, but we are in the home stretch here in the last month or so of the project.

Dave Blanks: Exciting stuff. Well where're we building the next dorm, Matt? Where are we building the next residence hall?

Matt Dull: That's a great question. And I'm hoping we take, I don't know, a couple of months breather before we start planning the next. We have really done renovations or new construction to every single residence hall we have on campus. So when this project is done, every residence hall is either 10 years or less in age if they were new construction, right. Or they've been renovated really within the last 15 years.

Dave Blanks: Even East?

Matt Dull: Well East we're actually taking down, or won't be using it for a residence hall. Newland is the only exception that. We're actually getting ready to do a little bit of reinvestment in Newland. So Newland's two buildings. It's an older wing that was built, gosh, I think the oldest part of Newland was built in the twenties. There's a newer part of the building that was finished in I think the early 1990s, so it's time to do a little bit of a refresh to Newland. So that's on the next horizon. So it's not a new building, but we'll be taking parts of Newland offline during a year and redoing some of the HVAC and get some better temperature control in there and getting better humidity control, do a few roof and gutter repairs on some site walls. So just getting it to where it can last another generation. And it just needs a little bit of TLC.

Matt Dull: And that really wraps up where every building that we have has really had some kind of significant renovation or they're a new building.

Dave Blanks: We stay busy.

Matt Dull: Yeah. So we stay busy, lots going on and I'm sure there will be something next after that.

Dave Blanks: Well, I hope so because we got to talk about something.

Matt Dull: That's right. That's right.

Dave Blanks: Well, Matt, anything else we want to cover today?

Matt Dull: I think that hits the highlights. We're good.

Dave Blanks: Well, thanks for spending some time and informing us so I appreciate you.

Matt Dull: Yeah, absolutely. Good to be back.

Dave Blanks: All right. We'll do it again.

Matt Dull: Do it again.