By Taylor Gaudens and Amanda Pretulac
Construction on the Campus Activities Center will have Student Government, The Crow’s Nest and Harborside Activities Board sharing the same room, Coquina 101, by the end of October.
The three entities currently have separate offices located in the CAC. However, in the new location, they will share one large room, a storage closet and one office. It’s a much different space from their usual separate offices, but the construction left them with limited choices.
“It’s a good amount of space,” said Jamie Kennedy, president of HAB. The clubs plan to arrange the furniture to create a separation between the organizations and leave a general open space.
“It’ll lead to more access while keeping that boundary,” Kennedy said.
IT infrastructure will be installed in the space at no cost to the organizations, said Norine Noonan, regional vice chancellor of Academic Affairs.
With homecoming festivities on the way, Kennedy said she hopes to get storage bins right away. The club owns shelves to put on top of the bins to eliminate wasting space. The bins were “not something we originally planned [to purchase],” she said. Nine bins add up to $120. The money for the bins will come from the HAB budget and Kennedy said it would be good for the organization in the long run.
Each entity is prepared to start packing and begin the moving process, but Kennedy isn’t sure when moving can begin.
“I don’t know when we’ll have access,” she said.
Kennedy learned of the move over summer 2011, and was notified Sept. 1 on the specifics about when the move would start.
“The projects were always paired together, but the schedule was never concurrent,” Noonan said. “In terms of space utilization, there is no overlap. Everyone who is in [the CAC] now is scheduled to go back there.”
Noonan said the construction should go as planned, because weather delays won’t affect the workers since they will be inside the building.
St. Pete Moving and Storage will take care of moving the furniture, Noonan said.
“We used the company to move the graphics design department to Harbor Hall, the College of Business to Bayboro Station and I believe we’ll use them for the move for SG, Crow’s Nest and HAB,” Noonan said.
The organizations will have to move their supplies on their own.
The moving arrangements are already set, but Kennedy questions the timing of the construction projects.
“Is it most beneficial to start construction on the CAC after the Multipurpose Center was finished because people moving into the new CAC already have offices [elsewhere on campus],” Kennedy said. “It’s not like they’re waiting and needing to move.”
“We felt as a leadership team, that it was important to get these projects done as soon as possible, because frankly, our students need these services,” Noonan said.
Noonan said the decision about where to move the three entities’ offices was “a discussion as to where we had space. We knew Coquina 101 was going to be available because that was the graphic arts studio, which moved to Harbor Hall,” she said.
“Lots of other spaces were considered in this decision,” said SG Vice President Mark Lombardi-Nelson. “I know there was talk of the PRW building, though Coquina was the choice made for the best possible situation [for the organizations].”
Coquina 101 is 1,80 square feet, Noonan said.
“We felt it was a good place to keep the entities that wanted to be together. Except for that space, the only spaces we had, which we are now using, are individual offices in Davis Hall that would not have necessarily been contiguous,” Noonan said. “We didn’t think that’d be particularly suitable, especially for Harborside and Student Government who need a place to meet.”
Kennedy and the HAB currently have offices right next to the Multicultural office, which will be relocated to PRW.
“It will make it more difficult to work with the Multicultural offices,” Kennedy said.
HAB, SG and The Crow’s Nest will be located in Coquina 101 “until the CAC reopens. I’m guessing nine months, 10 months. I think they’re hoping it’s done before next [school] year,” Noonan said.
Students will move into the new resident hall in August 2012, Noonan said.
“We bite the bullet for a year, and it’s miserable and we all hate it, and we’re all bunched up together, and then a year from now, we’ll forget about it,” Noonan said.
The new CAC, which has yet to be named, will contain the career center, health and wellness center, and disability services along with SG, HAB and The Crow’s Nest.
