Campus Construction Update, July 12, 2022

Associate Vice Chancellor for Finance and Operations Matt Dull chats with University Communications' Dave Blanks about the construction progress for App State's New River Hall and shares Child Development Center updates.

Transcript

Dave Blanks: Hey, folks, this is Dave Blanks from University Communications back with a campus construction update, and I'm joined by Matt Dull. Howdy, Matt.

Matt Dull: Hello, hello. Good to be back.

Dave Blanks: Good to see you back in studio once again.

Matt Dull: Mm-hmm.

Dave Blanks: Yeah. New River Hall is pretty much donezo, right?

Matt Dull: It's getting really close.

Dave Blanks: Is that a technical, scientific-

Matt Dull: Donezo is... Yeah.

Dave Blanks: Donezo.

Matt Dull: That's when you know you're complete.

Dave Blanks: Well, yeah, it looks great there. All the landscaping is awesome. There's sod down now, which looks a hundred times better than the dirt.

Matt Dull: Yeah, it's amazing what a little landscaping does to a project, and you're like, "Gosh, when are they ever going to be done?"

Dave Blanks: I know, and then all of a sudden-

Matt Dull: And then you do the landscaping and you do the paving of a parking lot, and it's like-

Dave Blanks: Well, that was fast.

Matt Dull: We can move in next week. We can move in tomorrow, right?

Dave Blanks: I know.

Matt Dull: It is pretty amazing how much that transforms the look, because so much of the exterior of the building really has been done for four or five months, all the brick work and rock work. And they've been working on pouring sidewalks and stairs and stuff, but the outside of the building hasn't really changed how it's looked in months. But then all of a sudden when you put that grass in, you put some trees in, it's like, "Oh my gosh."

Dave Blanks: This is for real.

Matt Dull: It's finally done. It's amazing that little bit, what that does to a project to make it feel like you're towards the end now.

Dave Blanks: So what else can we talk about with New River? I mean, is it complete? Is the punch list complete?

Matt Dull: Yeah, we're getting really close. We're wrapping up those final repairs from the punch list, and we'll do a back walk. Now, the back walk has been done in a lot of the residential rooms, really just focusing in on getting a lot of the back walk done, or walking back and checking off all the things that have happened, more in the corridors, common spaces. Those were the last little bits of the project. They'll do a final clean here in the next week or two, get it ready to turn over to our housing staff to start getting it ready for students to move in in August.

Dave Blanks: Does it have that new residence hall smell?

Matt Dull: Oh, yeah.

Dave Blanks: Yeah?

Matt Dull: Yeah. It's even better than a new car, you know?

Dave Blanks: Ahh, breathe it in. Educational housing.

Matt Dull: It's the nicest it's going to smell, you know?

Dave Blanks: Well, that is true. That is true. I have no ill memory of my dormitory/residence hall. So I don't know, whoever cleans them seems to do a pretty good job.

Matt Dull: Yeah, we have an awesome team on staff that do all of our cleaning. We do all of that in-house; it's not a service we contract out to. They're all folks that work here right at Appalachian, that live here locally and work and contribute to making a safe environment and clean environment for students.

Dave Blanks: One of my best memories moving in was how helpful and kind the guy who was on the, I guess, cleaning crew or whatever was. His name was Randy and he was really super nice and helpful and helped carry stuff. And yeah, I've seen him a couple of times since those many years ago, and I've told him that I appreciated it.

Matt Dull: It's amazing how many times we hear that from students.

Dave Blanks: Huge impact.

Matt Dull: Yeah, huge impact. Our maintenance folks, our housekeeping folks that are in the buildings, they're there every day, and students see them cleaning restrooms, cleaning common spaces, cleaning elevators, and particularly in the time of COVID, there's been so much more attention to detail on cleaning and sanitizing. It is just amazing how many students have great stories about that being one of their... Oftentimes one of their first connections to Appalachian-

Dave Blanks: That was mine.

Matt Dull: ... was actually through a staff member on their floor in their building. They play a really pivotal role, and we just really couldn't do it without that team. They just have a lot of work left to do too, right? So when the contractor walks... I don't want to say walks away. When they finish up, right? When things wrap up-

Dave Blanks: When they cut the ribbon and all that.

Matt Dull: When the ribbon's cut and everything, it's that team that's actually there getting it really ready for students to be in and making sure every space that's in the building, so that when a student moves in on move-in day, they don't end up in a room that's dusty or a room that's got leftover construction stuff in it.

Dave Blanks: Right.

Matt Dull: They will literally go through every room, every shower, every bathroom, every common space throughout the whole building, and just make sure it is really ready for students so when they move in, students and their families are not going to see a mess and that be their first impression of Appalachian. And they do that for all of our rooms. We've got 6,300 or so beds on campus and a little over 3,000 rooms, and they do that all over campus.

Dave Blanks: Right.

Matt Dull: Every summer we do that. We repaint most of the walls in every single building every summer.

Dave Blanks: Wow.

Matt Dull: We clean all the floors, strip and wax a lot of the floors that still require that. We do repairs every summer, paint over a million square feet.

Dave Blanks: There's not a summer break for that, yeah.

Matt Dull: There's not a summer break for that team.

Dave Blanks: Yeah.

Matt Dull: So they got a lot of work to do still to get that building open for our students here in about a month. Yeah.

Dave Blanks: Absolutely. Yeah. Won't be too much longer we'll do the ribbon cutting.

Matt Dull: And let's see, other things just in the building, laundry machines are in. Elevators have been certified by the... Elevators in North Carolina are certified by the Department of Labor in North Carolina. Buildings will be inspected for Life Safety, and are they to plans and specs by Town of Boone by the end of this week?

Dave Blanks: So certificate of occupancy then?

Matt Dull: So should have hopefully what they call a beneficial certificate of occupancy, which would then allow you really to be in the building without hard hats and all this safety equipment, and allow us to start having our housekeeping staff in the building more without having to do all the construction precautions and that kind of thing. So it would really would be basically say, "Hey, it's safe for people to be moving around in the building and in the building without that type of protective equipment."

Matt Dull: So hopefully, we'll have that end of this week, into the early next week, we'll have all the paperwork finalized for that. So really, really wrapping up everything for the project. Exterior site lighting's getting finalized. The trash compactor was installed last week.

Dave Blanks: Trash pacter, okay?

Matt Dull: Trash pacter. It was installed last week.

Dave Blanks: It's copywritten now.

Matt Dull: Whoever's transcribing this is just really-

Dave Blanks: There's a R beside it. Listen, transcriber, we apologize for all our shenanigans.

Matt Dull: Let's see. Yeah, pavers are installed out front in the courtyard. Sod's in, we talked about that. And all of our landscaping's in. That raised crosswalk from the Trivette side of Stadium Drive all the way over to New River is wrapping up, and that's-

Dave Blanks: I've noticed it.

Matt Dull: Yeah, I'm sure on your way...

Dave Blanks: I'm having some shock problems on my truck, and I really do notice the raised crosswalk. Makes me slow down.

Matt Dull: Yeah, I bet it does.

Dave Blanks: Encourages me to repair my vehicle.

Matt Dull: That's right.

Dave Blanks: Yeah. But it still has some final touches on it too.

Matt Dull: Yeah, little final touches there. Paving happens on the 8th of July.

Dave Blanks: Oh, okay.

Matt Dull: Which is tomorrow from the day we're recording, and last week if you're listening to this.

Dave Blanks: Mm-hmm.

Matt Dull: So yeah, paving is wrapping up on Stadium Drive, as well as final coat of pavement on the parking lot. We'll give it a few days to let that really cure, and then we'll stripe that asphalt this week as well.

Dave Blanks: Wait, wait, I sort of... I don't want to say I zoned out, because I was hanging on your every word, but are you saying they're going to pave Stadium? They're going to give it a final...

Matt Dull: No, there's certain sections of Stadium that have to be paved.

Dave Blanks: Okay.

Matt Dull: At the very bottom, we redid a little bit of the sidewalk. I don't know if you remember what it looked like before. It was paved over probably five different renovations and the concrete was poured, so it had some really odd sloping that really just didn't slope really nicely and created a lot of... You know, could potentially be a tripping hazard for folks.

Dave Blanks: Okay.

Matt Dull: So we actually came back and re-sloped the sidewalk where we were already pouring new sidewalk at New River Hall. Redoing the sidewalk to make it all once the same elevation or the same...

Dave Blanks: Grade?

Matt Dull: Grade, if you will, and not having the undulations or whatever that were there currently all the way down to the tunnel. And so that required us to take up a little bit of the asphalt on Stadium at the bottom. So that'll get repaved over. There might be a little bit of asphalt work around the pavers that are still to be done, like a final coat there around that raised sidewalk section. And then we've done the base coat of the paving of the parking lot where Gardner and Coltrane were, but we're going to put our final top layer. That'll be done on the 8th as well.

Dave Blanks: Okay. Downtown Boone got paved.

Matt Dull: Yeah, downtown Boone got paved. Everybody's getting...

Dave Blanks: Everybody's paving, come on.

Matt Dull: Everybody's paving, that's right.

Dave Blanks: What else do you want to talk about today, Matt? It's been our habit to talk about New River and then talk about the Child Development Center.

Matt Dull: Yeah, so Child Development Center is, again, moving along nicely. Interior is substantially complete. Furniture's in the building. In the process of setting those classrooms up so they can be ready to be inspected by the health department and our state licensing agency for approval. That's ongoing for probably the next month or so. Pavement's done, and curb and gutter is all done and sidewalks. So again, that really makes a big difference in how something looks complete.

Dave Blanks: I turned your mic up a little.

Matt Dull: Oh, okay, great.

Dave Blanks: I feel like it was...

Matt Dull: A little low?

Dave Blanks: It was too quiet.

Matt Dull: Oh, okay.

Dave Blanks: The people need to hear you.

Matt Dull: That's right. Let's see. Landscaping is ongoing through the next month or so, and really just wrapping things up over the next couple of weeks in terms of construction and then really just getting the classrooms ready. We've got a number of new teachers hired at the center and-

Dave Blanks: Awesome.

Matt Dull: ... ready to go for the expanded childcare spaces that are there.

Dave Blanks: How many new teachers were hired?

Matt Dull: Yeah, I think we've got about 10 new teachers-

Dave Blanks: Wow.

Matt Dull: ... on staff right now.

Dave Blanks: Okay. Great.

Matt Dull: Yeah.

Dave Blanks: Cool. And an additional... I mean, is it 60 more spots?

Matt Dull: It's an additional 55 or so spots. We'll have a final number once we're fully licensed and they get to be in the space.

Dave Blanks: Wonderful. When do they get to begin there?

Matt Dull: So we'll be opening up for this fall, for fall semester.

Dave Blanks: Cool. All right.

Matt Dull: So we're just literally just a few weeks away. Won't be too much longer. So yeah, we're in good shape there. And then...

Dave Blanks: When are we daylighting the Kraut Creek?

Matt Dull: That's a great question.

Dave Blanks: When's that happening?

Matt Dull: I'm not sure.

Dave Blanks: It's something, though, right? I didn't-

Matt Dull: Yeah, I think it's the part of that long term master plan for that area. And I think it's really figuring out when that fits into which projects you've got money for and which ones add that as part of their project scope, or is it going to have to be a totally separate project scope?

Dave Blanks: I got a list of projects like that in my house. They don't always get done as quickly.

Matt Dull: Yeah, they're part of the long term plan, but...

Dave Blanks: It's the long term plan.

Matt Dull: You've got to figure out timing and you got to figure out the money piece and how you fund that kind of project. And you're also disturbing parking spaces, and where do those parking spaces go?

Dave Blanks: Oh, I know.

Matt Dull: So there's some dominoes there that have to be figured out.

Dave Blanks: True that.

Matt Dull: It's still part of that campus master plan.

Dave Blanks: Which is available online.

Matt Dull: Yeah, it's available on that future site.

Dave Blanks: The future site. That's...

Matt Dull: Appstate.edu.

Dave Blanks: Appstate...

Matt Dull: Slash...

Dave Blanks: .edu/future. That's it.

Matt Dull: Yep.

Dave Blanks: And if you want to just relive some of Matt and Dave's finest moments-

Matt Dull: Relive the glory.

Dave Blanks: The glory of our previous podcasts, you can get all of those, and you can get the transcriptions on there as well. And the site looks good.

Matt Dull: Yeah, thanks for staying up-to-date on the site. Some updated pictures up there from the past few weeks.

Dave Blanks: Anything else we want to share, Matt?

Matt Dull: I think that hits the highlights for this week.

Dave Blanks: All right. I will see you next time, and thanks for your time. I appreciate you.

Matt Dull: Sounds good. We'll do it again.

Dave Blanks: Donezo. All right.

Matt Dull: Yeah, please include donezo at the end there.

Dave Blanks: Donezo.