City College will begin back-to-back construction on the Campus Store and Campus Center starting this summer.
The roughly 17,000 square-foot Campus Store will squeeze into three small portable classrooms while it undergoes renovation.
“The bookstore is very, very old,” said Paul Miller, the store’s director. “It was just time for some improvements.”
The store will begin a complete transformation in June and the project will likely run through December. During construction, the store will sell textbooks, essential supplies and a very limited selection of apparel from the Administration of Justice Building on East Campus.
The classes that were taught in the Administration of Justice Building will temporarily move into the classrooms that Kaplan International School has leased since 2003.
The Campus Store was deemed “structurally deficient,” but the plans go far beyond simple repairs. Miller envisions the store reopening as a modern hub, outfitted with touchscreens and iPads for students to gather and study.
The entire project will be funded with $2.3 million that the store has saved up over time.
As soon as the store is completely renovated, it will move back to its original spot and improvements on the “structurally deficient” Campus Center will begin.
City College plans to distribute all of the campus center programs throughout the school for the project. Once construction starts, offices in the center will move into Kaplan’s former space and the dining venues will be dispersed around the campus, according to the school’s facilities and operations director, Julie Hendricks.
The Campus Center houses offices for Student Life, Distance Education, Food Services and the Culinary Arts programs in addition to and the school’s mathematics, engineering and science achievement lab.
“There’s a lot of moving parts to that plan,” said Hendricks. “It takes time to move people out, then construction starts, then demolition then you have a year and a half, then you have to buy your furniture and all that, so the full period of time that the building will be out of commission is two years.”
JSB Cafe will move to the top of La Playa Stadium where administrators plan to set up a seating section across the parking lot from the Lifescape Garden. City College also plans to move the cafeteria to the large concrete patch right outside of the Student Services Building.
The snack shack at Sports Pavilion will temporarily be reshaped for Natural Bowls, and the administrators also plan to open a barbecue trailer on West Campus.
The center is expected to look different, but it will house the same programs and offices.
Total cost of the project is about $30 million, but City College was approved for federal funding to cover two-thirds of the cost; the school will pay $10 million out of pocket.
