Robbie Crowley
Campus & Beyond Editor
USF St. Petersburg students can anticipate a new student center ready for use by the fall 2012 semester. The design is complete and construction on the $22 million student center is scheduled to begin in March 2011.
It is estimated that it will take just over a year to complete, and includes the renovation of the Campus Activities Center.
The project has been important to Student Government, and students have shown support for a new student center for eight consecutive years through SG resolutions and surveys.
SG President James Scott said the student center would include a residence hall for nearly 200 students, a food court, a ballroom, meeting spaces, a game room, an atrium and a lot of indoor and outdoor seating.
Scott also said the center will have a higher LEED certification standard to reduce long-term energy costs, water consumption and environmental impacts, especially related to its construction.
Remodeling the CAC was planned as a way to reduce costs from the original larger design. One of the CAC’s new amenities for students will be a health clinic.
The CAC will also include new offices for clubs, Student Government, The Crow’s Nest, the Harborside Activities Board, Student Life, leadership/civic engagement, multicultural affairs, admissions, disability services, the Career Center and the Academic Success Center.
The university will pay for the estimated $3 million cost of the renovation, not student fees.
SG passed especially deliberate resolutions the past two school years to move the entire project forward.
Last year’s SG President Jon Ellington and Senate President Sarah Henry met personally with Gov. Charlie Crist, the speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, and other legislators. The state legislature and university began working on financing for the project last spring.
“Financing was always the difficult issue holding it back, not a lack of desire within USF,” Scott said.
USF spent the summer configuring the financial package. By the fall, the campus board approved the building and its accompanying fees. This project will cost students about an additional $14 per credit hour, which a student and faculty committee approved in May.
Once the USF Board of Trustees and USF Board of Governors approved the financing package by the end of 2010, there was no longer anything holding back the student center project.
Kent Kelso, regional vice chancellor of Student Affairs, sees the new student center as a way to help improve campus life.
“Our residential population continues to grow,” Kelso said. “We will always be primarily commuter, but such a significant jump in residential students will enhance the vibrancy of campus life, especially in the evenings and the weekends.”
Kelso anticipates the center will be the primary gathering place for students outside of class for relaxing, studying, recreation and food services.
Kelso credited the hard work from students to help get through the challenging process of getting authorization from the many approval agencies. The process had to go through seven agencies, beginning with Student Government and ending with Gov. Crist, before getting final approval from the USF Board of Trustees and Board of Governors.
In addition to the new student center, future changes for USF St. Petersburg will include renovations of the College of Business building and the old Salvador Dali Museum, when the university acquires the building this month.
Illustration by Rowe Architects
