Campus Construction Updates

Associate Vice Chancellor of Facilities Management Nick Katers and Vice Provost of Academic Program Development and Strategic Initiatives Mike McKenzie join University Communications’ Dave Blanks in studio to discuss Edwin Duncan Hall’s use as a space for art classes during the 2024-25 academic year, as well as the opening of the Holmes Drive Parking Deck, upgrades to the University Post Office and construction progress at the Appalachian 105 sports complex. New classroom spaces at App State's Hickory campus and parking changes for the Duncan Rankin/Peacock lots are also highlighted, along with the start of construction for the Peacock Hall addition project.
 
 
 
TRANSCRIPT
 
Dave
Hey, folks, how's it going? I'm Dave Blanks from University Communications. Back with another campus construction update. I'm joined in the studio today by associate vice chancellor of facilities management, Mr. Nick Katers and vice provost of academic program development and strategic Initiatives Dr. Mike McKenzie. Today, it's a discussion of what to expect when you're returning to campus. Hello guys. Thanks for coming in.
 
Nick Katers 
Hey.
 
Mike McKenzie 
Yeah, thanks for having me.
 
Dave
Yeah, we appreciate it. You guys are regulars, I love it. I'm glad. I'm glad. You have great information. Nick, I guess we'll start out with you. Can you give us a little bit of a summary of everything that's gone on over the summer? As it has been a lot.
Nick Katers 
It has been a lot. This is one of the busiest summers we've had. First off, the Holmes parking deck is open. 600 more parking spaces, for the university to be able to use. Also, the post office renovation is complete and that's going to be a fantastic new technology upgrade there. So you won't have to go up to the counter.
 
Nick Katers 
You'll be able to go in and swipe in with your card. A locker will appear and you'll be able to go and take your stuff out of the locker for that day. So it's a completely automated post office. Nobody will have set boxes anymore. There'll be dynamic reassignment of boxes, and that's, that's really kind of a fascinating upgraded way to do mail.
 
Nick Katers 
Also, we've been very successful with the weather this summer. So the App 105 Sports Complex is hitting a milestone this summer, too. We've finished the outdoor tennis courts, we're finishing up the women's softball. And we also have the auxiliary building finished up. That just leaves one more phase to go and that's the indoor tennis facility.
 
Nick Katers 
Down at Hickory, we have three new classrooms coming online for this fall semester, all on the second floor. It's the beginning of the second floor renovation. Three new classrooms will include a laboratory space, a general computer science lab and a cybersecurity lab. So all of those happened over the summer. Also, we're really close on a couple of new traffic lights, and I'll talk traffic at the end here for what the construction impact is.
 
Nick Katers 
But we're going to get a new traffic light at Hill Street to accommodate people crossing River Street from the new parking deck. Then the traffic light will be reinstalled out at App 105 to allow kids to get in and out of that giant parking lot a lot easier. And then the biggest accomplishment, I think, over the summer, was getting all of the functions that were still in Wey Hall, out of Wey Hall and redistributed to the other positions on campus.
 
Nick Katers 
I’ll let Mike talk about where they went.
 
Dave
Yeah! Please, Mike, share with us. I mean, I've been keeping my eye on the Octagon as I've been walking past, and I know that's a part of it.
 
Mike McKenzie 
Right, Yeah. So, Dave, if you remember, we talked previously about Wey Hall, just how it was unique in that that whole ground floor were not spaces that were really replicated anywhere on campus. It wasn't just as simple as, hey, this place needs a classroom. I can find you a classroom. These were places that very unique artistic skills and machinery that were needed that we just had to find completely new homes for.
 
Mike McKenzie 
And so, yeah, to Nick's point, over the summer, a lot of that is moving into the Octagon portion of Duncan. The other portion of Duncan is still undergoing construction, but we have been able to fit most things that were in Wey Hall into the Octagon. But if I give you a quick rundown just for students who are taking... whether they're art majors or are taking, you know, some of their gen ed requirements in that area, so they'll know where to go.
 
Mike McKenzie 
We are still using East Hall some. So students who are in the DigiLab, which is like the laser cutting lab or the alternative processes lab for photography, will still be on level one of East Hall. Level two of East Hall will still have art education, the book arts. fibers and some of our design studios, painting studios and senior studios workshops.
 
Mike McKenzie 
Also in East Hall, we have our synergy lab and some paper making type skills. Now what we have completely moved into Duncan is our clay studios. So if you remember the Octagon, it's kind of divided into four really big separate units. And so each of these areas will have their own unit over there. So Clay Studios will be one fourth of the octagon.
 
Mike McKenzie 
The foundations to woodshop will be another fourth of the octagon. The printmaking studios will be a fourth. And then the final fourth is like the senior studio workspaces. So when they do their presentations, when they do their shows and things like that, we have a space for them there. The one thing we did move over, actually, into Katherine Harper Hall, which already is a fine and applied arts building, but that's more the applied design and STBE (Sustainable Technology and the Built Environment) sustainable development type classrooms...
 
Mike McKenzie 
We have metal smithing and sculpture over there. Without getting too far into the weeds, they just have some very specific airflow and gas demands. And there actually was a classroom in Harper that had previously been built that was being used by STBE, that had this already in existence. And so STBE was very gracious to say, hey, it doesn't make sense for you to build out a whole new classroom just to accommodate this for a year.
 
Dave
And I will mention for our listeners, STBE: Sustainable Technology and the Built Environment.
 
Mike McKenzie 
Right. And as Nick mentioned, this has been not only ongoing all summer, but at the end of the spring semester, we did a hardhat walkthrough with the faculty, and we really gave them a blank slate. We said, hey, tell us what makes the most sense to you. You know, we don't want to pretend to understand their discipline better than they do.
 
Mike McKenzie 
And they went right in there and got to work and said, oh, this should be here. This should be here. And we actually did another hardhat walkthrough a week ago with not only the entire faculty who will be teaching in the Octagon, but the department chair and the dean as well. The collaboration that was involved, the faculty, Nick's folks, and other academic affairs will really make it a great year as we have our art programs, mainly in the Edwin Duncan Octagon until Wey Hall opens up probably next fall, where, you know, we'll have that brand new showcase for them.
 
Dave
Fantastic, Nick, and we'll go back to you on this. With all these changes, you still have to have pedestrians moving through the area. Can you speak to the disruption?
 
Nick Katers 
Sure. Thanks, Dave. And again, there's a lot going on and progress sometimes causes us to kick up a little dust and have to close off areas. I'll sort of start with some of the easier ones. First Wey Hall is completely closed now, but you can get around Wey Hall on both sides, so you can get around it through the wide walk area that runs from the parking deck area.
 
Nick Katers 
And you can also get around it on the hillside where the students entered last year, so you can get through from the West Campus residence hall area to the Schaefer Center, still on two different paths. So while there's a fenced off area, it's still passable. The central dining roof is still in process, so there will be vehicles around the central dining hall for about another 2 to 3 weeks.
 
Nick Katers 
But both entrances to the central dining hall will still be open, so that shouldn't be a major disruption, and we're hoping to wrap that up in a couple of weeks. The Duncan Peacock Complex is probably our biggest disruption, so fences have now gone up on both projects. Duncan is completely fenced off. You can get to the parking area that runs closest to River Street and get through both tunnels, and be able to traverse towards the Peacock parking lot and to the Rankin Science Complex.
 
Nick Katers 
But you won't be able to go through the old courtyard for now. While that's open. Most of the Peacock parking lot is still open. We had to reconfigure that lot to move the Appalcart bus stop a little closer to River Street, so you'll see a new traffic pattern for the bus that goes there.
 
Nick Katers 
Between Duncan and Peacock there is going to be one pedestrian lane that you can still pass through, and that will remain open during the duration of the construction. And then Peacock, as most people can probably see, the patio has been all torn up already.
 
Dave
I did see that.
 
Nick Katers 
So, that's quite a dramatic change. For a couple more weeks. You'll still be able to use that entrance up against the wall where the patio was, but soon we'll be shifting the entrance to Peacock, primarily to Howard Street, so the Howard Street entrance will become the main entrance for Peacock during the duration of the addition onto Peacock.
 
Nick Katers 
And I think it's worth saying that Peacock is going to remain about 85% open during the construction. The construction is an addition, so we're not actually demolishing any spaces that are active. So again, we'll be moving some ADA spaces up to Howard Street so that students can park and be able to enter on the second level of Peacock, the students that need that access, because we had to remove some of our ADA spots from the area of construction, there will be some minor disruptions as we periodically have to shut things down and open them back up again, but in the long run, we're going to get incredible new additions to the facilities.
 
Mike McKenzie 
Absolutely. Yeah. And on an academic front, Peacock, it's an addition. So really the main thing some students may notice as far as differences in Peacock, other than the entrance, as Nick has mentioned, is some of the faculty offices have had to be relocated down to the first floor where RIEEE previously had been. What they may see is just a couple of their faculty are in a different office space.
 
Mike McKenzie 
That's really the biggest difference from the student experience when it comes to Peacock.
 
Dave
The addition looks great. I'm just checking online at appstate.edu/future. And yeah, it's an exciting change to Peacock and I understand it extends the life of the building, something like 50 years is what we're saying.
 
Nick Katers 
Yeah, exactly. It'll make it our third largest campus building as well, which is perfect for a growing college like the College of Business.
 
Dave
And I'm noticing in this picture that there is still a traffic circle there, which is like, hey, meet me at the traffic circle. You know, people know what you're talking about when you say that. So right now, as you said, Nick, the traffic circle has kind of moved forward. Is that going to be the permanent location of the traffic circle? Will it be...I don't know.
 
Nick Katers 
So it's going to be a temporary location for a couple of years. If you recall, we still have an end goal of trying to reopen that creek.
 
Dave
Right. The daylighting.
 
Nick Katers 
Yeah. The daylighting of the Boone Creek. So when that happens, we'll move the Appalcart turnaround across the street to a different location, and then we'll end up putting in another parking deck either adjacent to Peacock or very near Peacock. But again, we still have that goal of opening up the Boone Creek, daylighting that whole area and turning it back into a natural area.
 
Nick Katers 
So I would hesitate to say that that's a permanent change for Appalcart. It's probably a 5 to 7 year change for Appalcart.
 
Dave
Okay, gotcha. So then there will...you're saying there would be a turnaround on the other side of River Street? All right. But that's a little ways down the line right now. This picture that I'm looking at says for discussion purposes only. So we are discussing it.
 
Nick Katers 
The last thing I'd like to cover is just the progress on the innovation campus. So we continue to move forward with those three projects up there, which include the new faculty staff housing, another academic building and then a district energy system to supply renewable clean energy for that entire district up there. The energy system and the faculty staff housing are going to be completed by next fall.
 
Nick Katers 
And we're excited to be able to add that to our inventory.
 
Dave
Absolutely. Yeah, it looks great up there. And Mike did you want to add something?
Mike McKenzie 
Yeah, I would just say, kind of as we wrap up, Dave, just in closing to thank not only our students and staff and faculty and everyone who's working through this process with us, and then thank our state elected officials and board of governors for continuing to support Appalachian. I mean, these are investments in Appalachian. This is a time to celebrate. While the dust is being kicked up a little bit,
 
Mike McKenzie 
As Nick mentioned, the final product, the Peacock edition, the parking deck, you know, the Wey Hall finished product...all of these are going to benefit students moving forward for, you know, as you mentioned, like the next 50 years with Peacock. I think this is a really, really exciting time for App and I think we should just pause for one second and just recognize while the dust is here right now, the end product is really going to be something that benefits Appalachian for decades to come.
 
Dave
Absolutely. Nick Katers, Dr. Mike McKenzie, thank you both so much for coming by today... for being here.
 
Mike McKenzie 
Thank you Dave.

Associate Vice Chancellor of Facilities Management Nick Katers and Vice Provost of Academic Program Development and Strategic Initiatives Mike McKenzie join University Communications' Dave Blanks in studio to discuss progress on the second-floor renovation of App State's Hickory campus, as well as the finishing touches that are being applied to the Holmes Drive Parking Deck.
 
 
Transcript
 
Dave Blanks
Hey, folks, how's it going? I'm Dave Blanks from University Communications. Back with another Campus Construction Update. Today I'm joined in studio by Associate Vice Chancellor of Facilities Management, Mr. Nick Katers and Vice Provost of Academic Program Development and Strategic Initiatives, Dr. Mike McKenzie for a discussion about the App State Hickory campus. Guys, thank you both so much for being here today. I appreciate it.
 
Nick Katers
Thanks, Dave.
 
Mike McKenzie
Thanks for having us.
 
Dave Blanks
So the topic at hand is the Hickory Campus. Hickory opened up to its inaugural class of mountaineer students on August 21st, 2023, and now phase two renovations are underway. So that's our topic for today. So I don't know if Nick, you want to start it out. This is phase two. Obviously phase one is complete. How many phases in the Hickory campus.
 
Nick Katers
So you know, we've probably we're probably looking at five phases. Initially we had a very generous appropriation from the state legislature for $41 million, and it was spread out over four years. So we realized that we couldn't just attack the entire building at the same time, and we would have to phase the building according to floor. So there are five above ground floors. So there will be five phases to the entire project. The good news here is that the $41 million appropriation is no longer spread out over four years. It's only spread out over two. So we'll be able to attack the second floor, in good order and more quickly than we had previously anticipated. So right now we're in Phase 2a, which, you know, Phase 2 is assume the second floor. Phase 2a is a very small improvement to the second floor. We're really focused on the addition of three new classrooms on the second floor. There's essentially a computer lab, a cyber security lab and a general chemistry lab. So I can let Mike kind of tell what went into the selection of those three. But again, we were working off the initial funding model, which didn't have a lot of money this year. And so we can talk about the future phases as well.
 
Dave Blanks
Sure. Yeah. Mike, speak to the classrooms.
 
Mike McKenzie
Sure. So as Nick mentioned, we have three new spaces that we're really excited about because there's a big need for them, frankly, based on the academic interest of the students there and where we see the future going with Hickory. So space one, as Nick mentioned, is a cybersecurity lab and Appalachian State last year had approval to offer a standalone bachelor's in cybersecurity. We have a cybersecurity lab that we're building in Boone. And now we also have one in Hickory. And what really makes the cyber lab cool is we've worked with Dr. Scott Hunsinger and his colleagues and other faculty to really design this to be state of the art. They told us what works for them from a, you know, a student experience and kind of where we landed.... the best way to describe it, I would say there's these pods where students work together and there's a control room where the faculty member can do things like send attacks at the students in real time, they have to kind of fend these off. And one of the biggest things that I learned very early on in talking to our IT folks is because of the nature of what cyber does, it is really important that they, in simplest terms, have their standalone computer network. You don't want to just use regular computers. So they kind of needed their own network to be able to do this. So they have this unique space that really is designated for cyber security. The other two spaces that we're really excited about that are opening this fall... one is a computer lab, and that space kind of doubles between when it's not in use as a classroom, students can obviously go and complete their work, but a lot of the programs that we've had interest in are, frankly, College of Business courses, and a lot of those require some technical computer programs and things that a student wouldn't just have on their standalone laptop at home, for example. So, having this lab with the specifications that the faculty need to teach these upper level courses to the students, and then the final space that we're really excited about for fall is this kind of general science lab. And so, you know, we do have a large number of students who are taking general education courses down there. Obviously a component in every gen ed is there's a science course, and we have not been able to teach a lab in person. You know, there are some online labs that we've been able to do, but we don't have a way to teach a lab where students can be hands-on. So, this is the first hands-on lab in the Hickory building. So students can actually take that science lab in person and get that hands-on experience that they like. And again, this lab in particular is really made for the intro courses. Intro to biology based on the location on where it is. And, you know, specs that a lab would need in terms of airflow and things like that. We'll have an opportunity to build some more advanced labs in additional parts of phase two. But early on, Phase 2a, we're really excited to have that computer lab, the cyber lab, in the intro to bio lab space.
 
Dave Blanks
Fantastic. So when are the completion dates for Phase 2a?
 
Nick Katers
So Phase 2a really got started in May and it didn't offer us a lot of time to get everything ready for the fall. but we'll have those three classrooms ready for the August start of the semester. And then the rest of the second floor is sort of broken down into two sub phases. We may not keep it that way now that the money has been sort of pushed forward in the queue a little bit. So as soon as we finish with Phase 2a, which is done, fall of 24, we’ll immediately go into 2b, which is the rest of the north side of the building. So think approximately there's 7 to 8 new classrooms, some study spaces, some office spaces, some additional student lounge space. Then Phase 2c is the rest of the second floor. We're really shooting for fall of 25, to have the rest of the second floor done. In fall of 2026 for phases 3, 4 and 5. Those are smaller floor plates so we should be able to move through the tower pretty quickly.
 
Dave Blanks
Sounds good. All right. So even though Phase 2 is underway, that doesn't mean the first floor hasn't had some changes. I understand there have been. Nick, if you want to speak to those.
 
Nick Katers
Yeah, sure. I mean, we're continuing to go back in and update the first floor. The wayfinding has been drastically improved. The grab and go areas, the vending areas. The most exciting part of the updates to the first floor, though, is the addition of the coffee kiosk, which will be in the Student Commons area on the north side that will be open for students all day long to not only get coffee, but there's some hot vending machines in the area and they're going to have some other limited offerings as well. So, one of the big complaints about students there is that there's not enough opportunities for food. So we're addressing this immediately, and we're continuing to improve the classroom environment on the first floor. We have 11 classrooms on the first floor and each subsequent semester, as we learn lessons from the previous one, they're being updated. On the ground floor, again we have the addition of the student Commons student Union game room area, which is adjacent to the cafeteria. The gym is open and the capabilities in the gym are improving every year. We’re getting as we get more students. Eventually the cafeteria will reopen as well.
 
Mike McKenzie
Yeah. Nick, I think you're really selling yourself short a little bit with some of the renovations. I know you threw in that student lounge space, and I think the student lounge is a great example of where, you know, you and your team have been receptive to student requests. And, you know, when we originally planned this first floor, there's these huge spaces. We thought students would use this as their congregating and study space. And while they study in that space a lot, the message we heard from students was, hey, I just need a hangout space. I feel like I need to be quieter here, for example. And so we used that information and Nick and his team built this nice little student lounge on the first floor next to the cafeteria.
 
Nick Katers
With a lot of help from Student Affairs.
 
Mike McKenzie
With student affairs. Yeah. They interviewed students and asked what they wanted. And as Nick said, there's a pool table down there, there's a skee-ball table, there's some video games. If you go down there, you'll hear students playing their music. So it is more of that, like, hey, right now, like I'm taking a break from study. This is my nonacademic space. And I think naively, maybe when we built it, we thought the common spaces on the first floor would do that. And like I said, the students kind of told us that, no, we need this dedicated space for that.
 
Dave Blanks
They're too respectful.
 
Mike McKenzie
They are! And so if you go to the ground floor, you will always see students in there just honestly having a good time. I'm hoping to get down there and, you know, challenge some of our students in Mario Kart.
 
Dave Blanks
Oh heck yeah. Oh that sounds great.
 
Nick Katers
And we've also got some outdoor spaces that they asked for during the semester. So tell me about that. So we've added some, some hammock stands out there, some additional picnic tables so that they can hang out outside. They asked for it and, you know, we were able to put in some pretty nice outdoor spaces as well for the students to hang out between classes.
 
Dave Blanks
Nice. Yeah, those are great updates for the first floor. I didn't realize I didn't realize those were happening.
 
Nick Katers
Dave, I think it's probably a good opportunity to take a little bit of a history shot at the building, too, and what we've done to improve the building, specifically from an energy standpoint. The building is 50 years old in most of the areas right now, so as soon as we purchased it in the fall of 2021, we immediately engaged an energy audit team from Duke Energy and a couple of other providers in the area to come and take a good, hard look at what are the immediate fixes we can make to the building we went through. The building had old style fluorescent lights throughout the 225,000 square foot area. So we've been upgrading all the lights. We've re-lamped everything to new LEDs. We have improved the control system so that the HVAC system runs more efficiently. We've also gone through we've replaced the roof with a new high energy efficiency roof. We've even installed the posts for future solar panels so that we'll be able to add solar to the building as the funding sources allow.
 
Dave Blanks
Great.
 
Nick Katers
In this coming year, we'll be installing EV charging stations on the north side parking lot...
 
Dave Blanks
Oh, I didn't know that.
 
Nick Katers
...with a federal grant opportunity. So yeah, we're pretty excited about that because this will increase drastically the number of EV charging stations in the area.
 
Dave Blanks
You know how many we're going to have?
 
Nick Katers
I think we're looking at six new EV charging stations right now. And they'll be…we're looking at a mixture of Cat two and Cat three chargers. The super chargers for Teslas and the Cat two for all the rest of the types of vehicles that are out there. So a lot of continuous improvement to make the building more energy efficient.
 
Dave Blanks
Oh that's fantastic. Good to hear. So we mentioned earlier before we got started on what Phase 2 was that there are five phases. So maybe we should give a brief explanation of what all those phases are. We've said it before, but it bears repeating. What are we looking at? What are all the phases consisting of?
 
Nick Katers
Sure. Again, Phase 1 was the majority of the first floor and the ground floor. That was the priority to get us open in August of 23. And we're moving on to Phase 2 with the intended completion date of the fall of 25. Then, as we look at the third, fourth and fifth floor, we're still in the programming phase of what we're going to do with those. We know immediately that we're going to reconfigure them for educational purposes. Much more emphasis on additional offices. That has been a constraining point for the first floor. We have a number of offices, but not for the faculty and staff that have to work in this building. So we know immediately that the fourth floor is going to get a lot more offices. The third floor, we're really sort of still in the discovery phase of what the programming is going to require. There's about 35,000ft² of usable space on each of the third, fourth and fifth floor. So there's a lot of potential to add small seminar rooms. additional offices, and even potentially 1 or 2 larger classrooms on each of those floors or specialty academic space. The fifth floor is really B.B Dougherty of Hickory. So that's the administrative space for the administration here.
 
Mike McKenzie
And we're taking this opportunity as we go beyond phase 2a, so 2b and 2c and Phase 3 to really look at the academic offerings. Dave, as you mentioned, this building's only been open for a year. So we're still learning a little bit about the student interest in Hickory. The goal when we opened this building was to bring the Appalachian State experience down to Hickory, but not replicate every single thing we have, every single program. What are the citizens of Hickory interested in? Understanding that. We are starting to learn a little bit more about the majors that are of interest in Hickory and student behaviors. So, we're using that information and working with our faculty and our associate deans to help design these classrooms. You know, they want flexible classroom space. They want classrooms where seats can move around and students can congregate together and then spread out. They want spaces where we can have a small seminar room and maybe you hit a button and the wall moves and now it's a bigger classroom. We’re a little bit limited there because of ceiling height and some structural beams and things like that. but we know at some point we need classrooms that are going to hold, say 50 students or 48 students and so we're working around designing, you know, we need X number of classes that hold 20 people on X number of classrooms that may be hold 50 and as Nick mentioned, maybe we need seminar spaces for for some of these upper level classes. So we're really using student information from the first year and seeing where students are returning and their interest areas to design these spaces. Because, you know, this is our one shot. Right now we have a blank slate. Oh yeah. As we see if these are the programs that students are really demanding, we need to make sure the building and the classrooms meet the needs of that. I mean, you come in, Boone, you know, when you're in the College of Business. You know, when you're in the College of Ed. Here, it's a little bit more blended, but we have to make sure that the spaces are going to meet the needs of the students and faculty we have there. So we're really using, you know, this fall and spring to kind of master plan Hickory out in a much more, you know, 360 degree view to make sure we're where we need to be.
 
Dave Blanks
Measure twice. You know?
 
Mike McKenzie
Yes, yes, exactly.
 
Dave Blanks
Yeah. Well, so I'm curious. I know, like, face to face with teachers actually speaking with students, was there a study done? Whose job is it to actually go and hunt down? Like, what is it we need here? It's so sprawling. There's so many possibilities for what it could be.
 
Mike McKenzie
Right.
 
Dave Blanks
So how do we figure out what it should be?
 
Mike McKenzie
Great question. And I think there's a couple answers here. So before we opened we actually met with, you know, I think it was 50 business leaders that the Chamber of Commerce helped set us up with, as well as community colleges down there. And so we did a lot of... and high school students too! We did a lot of interviewing them and asking, you know, what do you think it is Hickory needs? Student support those kinds of things. So we understood, you know, what what things do students need access to that maybe we don't think about as much in Boone? Since we've opened, while we're still talking to businesses and things like that obviously, now we have a couple hundred students in the building every day, and Student Affairs has actually done a great job. So credit to JJ’s shop with Monica Reed down there leading these interview sessions with students where she'll have a topic for the day and she'll meet with a group of ten students and say, hey, you know, what is it you think the building needs? Or, you know, what is it you're most interested in? And as Nick mentioned, that's where the student lounge idea kind of came from. Students mentioned that. So it's a combination of trying to understand the future of Hickory and where it's going and working with the business leaders there, but also talking with the people who day to day are in the building because their lives are impacted by that. So really bringing those two pieces together to help develop a plan for Hickory moving forward.
 
Dave Blanks
Well, that sounds like some exciting changes going on down there. And it sounds like progress is moving on. Nick, that’s not the only thing we're doing around Appalachian. I know, there are many construction projects. I did notice that the parking deck at Holmes, which on the next episode it'll be all things parking and traffic. Yeah. You guys will also come back. Mike and Nick, I believe both of you guys will be here to talk about just kind of the changes that people can expect to see when they're returning to campus for this next semester after the summer's over. Right. Was that the plan?
 
Mike McKenzie
Correct.
 
Dave Blanks
Okay. Yeah, that'll be a good plan. But yeah. Parking deck looking good. I mean, there's plants getting planted. It's looking like the very final touches are happening on it.
 
Nick Katers
Absolutely. This has been a very successful project with a new partner, New Atlantic Construction, who came in and has done a fantastic job of giving us exactly what we were looking for. So the parking deck is in the final phases. It's wrapping up in the next two weeks. Like you said, we're seeing asphalt get put down, plants are going in. We're looking at opening the parking deck for traffic as the move in week begins on the 12th of August. Okay. And there will be a ribbon cutting.
 
Dave Blanks
I was going to ask. Do you have any idea on that?
 
Nick Katers
Yeah, I think the ribbon cutting right now is scheduled for the 22nd of August at 4 p.m. We'll have cars in the deck for the ribbon cutting, and it'll be exciting. I'm extremely proud of the work the App State team has done on this parking deck. We have really delivered this one. It's going to be a huge benefit to that side of campus in terms of adding 600 new parking spaces.
 
Mike McKenzie
And Dave, I think, you know, speaking for two basketball season ticket holders right here, we're really excited about that as well, because there is an entrance directly from the deck into the Holmes Center. And if you've, you know, basketball, you get some weather sometimes in the winter and to be able to do that, I think it'll be great not just for selfishly Nick and I, but people that maybe don't want to be exposed to the elements can walk right into Holmes Center from from the Holmes Center parking deck.
 
Dave Blanks
So I'm sure Coach Kerns is happy about that.
 
Mike McKenzie
Coach Kerns is really excited.
 
Dave Blanks
Big changes. So much to talk about, guys. I appreciate you taking the time today. I know you're very busy and we'll do it again. Thank you. Nick Katers and Mike McKenzie thank you both.
 
Mike McKenzie
Thanks.
 
Nick Katers
Thanks, Dave.

App State Director of Planning, Design and Construction Jeff Pierce and University Interior Designer Jacki McGuire join University Communications' Dave Blanks in studio to discuss a number of ongoing campus construction and renovation projects at App State, including renovations to Edwin Duncan Hall and the University Post Office.
 
 
TRANSCRIPT
Dave BlanksHey, folks, this is Dave Blanks from University Communications back with a Campus Construction Update. And I'm really happy to have Mr. Jeff Pierce and Jacki McGuire in the house. Hey, Jeff and Jacki how are y'all?
Jeff Pierce Hey, Dave, it's good to be back with you.
Jacki McGuire Hey Dave.
Dave BlanksI know y'all are good because you've been talking, like, nonstop since you came in here, so...
Jeff Pierce It's always a good time with you, Dave and on podcasts.
Dave BlanksI mean, you know, It is fun, and I'm glad that you're down here. And, that's the kind of energy we want, you know, for a podcast. Because if you're not talking, podcasts are pretty dull.
Jeff Pierce Go figure.
Dave BlanksYeah, I know! Weird right? So Jeff Pierce, the director of planning, design and construction, and Jacki McGuire, the university's interior designer. Great to have you both. And on the, podcast today, we're going to talk about, a few different things, an overview of some of the bigger projects that are going on, here in Boone, also in Hickory, also going to discuss the post office, which is getting a big change. It looks great in there. It looks really cool. I've seen some artist renderings, some mock ups. And then we're going to get specific on Edwin Duncan. But first off, Jeff, if you don't mind starting with, kind of a broad overview, get up, get up high for, for a view of the of the school and what we're doing.
Jeff Pierce Will do! We're doing $300 million worth of construction between the main campus here at Boone and the Hickory campus, the innovation campus, which is the old Broyhill Inn site, we're doing faculty housing units up there through a public private partnership, as well as a district energy system, which we're putting in geothermal wells. We're putting in solar and putting in two additional wind turbines as well, to provide that hilltop up there with energy. As we move down the hill, we're doing construction work at Wey Hall. It’s a full renovation of Wey Hall which is the arts building. We come across the street there at Edwin Duncan. We'll talk about more of that later. We'll go down the street. We're doing some minor projects. Katherine Harper Kerr Scott, as we're moving the people out of Wey Hall, we're moving some of them into there as well, over into the Octagon and East Hall and then down in Hickory, we're doing a, renovation on the second floor, renovating the second floor. We're putting in a cyber lab, initially a kind of a general studies lab for like, chemistry, general sciences and then there's just a standard computer lab as well.
Dave BlanksOkay. Computer lab, cybersecurity lab. And then to general instruction. Okay.
Jeff Pierce And then we'll renovate the other floor with other labs over the next 1 to 2 years down there as well. And then once we're done with that one, we'll move to the third, fourth and then fifth floor.
Dave BlanksTotal of five floors.
Jeff Pierce Correct. We got about $40 million that we've got right now, that we're planning out. And we'll take it as far as we go in this dynamic time of, inflation and construction these days..
Dave BlanksWell, everything when we started the Campus Construction Update, it was before Covid, and then we went through Covid and access to materials and inflation and all these other factors like, came in and became such huge players. And it's still...
Jeff Pierce It still is. It’s not as dramatic as it and it kind of pops around from roofs at the beginning and during the pandemic was hard to get long lead items. Dozer came back in line. But there will be different things like HVAC systems.
Dave BlanksRight.
Jeff Pierce That are hard to get long lead items, generators and stuff. And pricing hasn't really came down that much. What has happened is we have adjusted our estimation to account for it to be more conservative, to account for that.
Dave BlanksI'm not sure they want to come down on the price to be totally honest.
Jeff Pierce No. They don't and it never does. It's amazing. Once you get a rise it will drop down a little bit and then it will level off but it will never go back to where it was before.
Dave BlanksSad but true.
Jeff Pierce It’s the nature of the business.
Dave BlanksAnything else broad overview you want to you want to mention before we get into, the post office?
Jeff Pierce No, we'll go ahead and dive into that.
Dave BlanksSounds good. Jacki, tell us what's happening with the post office. So let's start that way.
Jacki McGuire So the post office, we're doing a complete renovation of all of the public facing areas. So a new passport office, new counter for picking up packages and buying stamps, things like that, and then a new locker system that's really exciting. It's going to allow students and faculty and staff to pick up packages outside of business hours for the post office.
Dave BlanksThat is not something that's currently happening.
Jacki McGuire No. Right now with packages, you do have to go to the counter when they're open. Which is super inconvenient for some students if they're busy or faculty that are busy all day. So we're really excited to be able to expand the offerings for the post office. So this is my first capital project that I'm the project manager for. So since it's an interior renovation, we felt like this was a good fit as the university interior designer. So we're working with a design team called Studio Archibene. This our first project with them on this campus, so we're really excited to have a new architecture team. They've come up with some really fun ideas that really feel branded for App State and we’ve got some cool, unique features that we're going to have in there.
Dave BlanksSome very different stuff. Yeah, no offense to the post office right now, not the most fun place in the world. I love the people that work there. They're fantastic. But yeah, the, the mock ups that I've seen look so cool. Especially the passport office as you, as you mentioned, isn't there going to be, like, a map on the wall or something?
Dave BlanksOr you're thinking about it?
Jacki McGuire We're going to add it, I think, after the project we've been talking about what that might look like. We want to do a world map. So as people are coming to renew their passports, they can kind of put a little note of where our App family has been around the world. So that would be so cool. I think it's going to be super fun. This is going to bring the passport office out so that the entrance is coming from the lobby and there will be a true waiting area. So I think that's going to be a really nice addition and just kind of remind people that service exists. There also be some new furniture and a really cool block A installation that's going to be built by our carpentry shop. So we're very excited to be able to include them in something cool that will be a focal point for years to come.
Dave BlanksYeah, that's going to be fun. Currently the passport office, you can get your picture taken there, but you have to go like back around to where the employees are working. Not not really. Wasn't designed with that in mind I don’t think.
Jacki McGuire Yes. So I got to say the first time I went to that part of the post office, I was getting my passport and I felt so out of place. I was a brand new employee and I was like, this is not where I'm supposed to be, right now.
Dave BlanksIt feels like, yeah, it feels like employees only area. That's going to be great. So how long is that going to take? Do you all know is it started in earnest? It has now.
Jacki McGuire Yes. So, we have completed demo and they are in the process of putting up walls. So it's starting to really take shape. It's going to be ready at the end of the summer. Just in time for students come back. So it is a very short timeline, which is tough to do. But we wanted to make sure we were disrupting the services the post office provides as little as possible and making it easier for students when they come back. So all of this will make it a better environment for everybody involved.
Jeff Pierce Most people don't realize that we have a very short window to get our construction done, especially in an occupied building. So, usually our summer is our longest duration when we have, you know, less population on campus. And you figure it's only about three months and that's our longest time span. Then we try to hit, you know, critical outages during fall and spring break and then during a holiday break as well. But those are short durations. That's our biggest obstacle alot of the time is trying to find times to get the work done that have the least impact on our students and faculty.
Dave BlanksAre you all starting with most of the things you need? You know what I mean? You’re not waiting on, those how did you phrase it?
Jeff Pierce Long lead items. So yeah, that's another one of our obstacles. And so like for Jacki, she can expand more on it. But just like the locker system. We knew that was a long lead item. We pulled that one out and we purchased that outside of the contract so we could go ahead and get that purchase and have it ready to meet that timeline.
Dave BlanksIs it sitting somewhere right now on our campus?
Jacki McGuire No. Not yet. That is why. So, we had to order that as equipment outside of the project because it was, I think, I want to say, a three month lead time in itself. And since we only have three months to complete the project, we needed to get it ready. So, we expect those coming towards the end of July. They'll come in, get delivered and just slide right into place. So the contractor is basically going to build a little box out, and those lockers will slide in once they arrive.
Jeff Pierce So we have a lot of risk in our project. So we we have to plan a lot of times and go ahead and start construction with the hope. And I use that sparingly. But the hope that everything matches up perfectly at the end and comes together and you know, it doesn't impact the faculty and staff and students here.
Dave BlanksThat's the anticipation.
Jeff Pierce It is! You know, it's like the Heinz ketchup anticipation.
Dave BlanksYou’re waiting for it! Yeah! Well, so okay, how is it going to change with the old boxes like, I mean as far as, like what's happening with them. Are people still getting their mail and they can go check it like the way they used to. It's just that now a package can fit into it. Right?
Jacki McGuire Kind of. So one thing will be that you won't get assigned a specific P.O. box the way you used to. What will happen is you'll get an email that says you've received a package. You'll take your phone, your app card or whatever to the post office, and you can log in, swipe or scan a QR code at a kiosk, and that will pop open the locker where your product is, and you'll be able to pick that up whether it's mail, there's some smaller lockers for traditional mail or larger lockers for a package. So it'll allow the postal workers to utilize different lockers based on what's actually coming in that day.
Dave BlanksOh, that's gonna make it way easier for them to distribute that stuff.
Jacki McGuire They're super excited. And then things will only stay in the lockers for 24 hours. Then it'll get pulled out and you will have to go to the counter to pick them up at that point. But it also allows them to kind of keep track of things, because currently what happens is a lot of students get mail at the beginning of the semester and it just sits in their mailbox all year because they don't check it. So this is a better way to notify students and help make sure that the mail gets picked up and we don't have grandma's check sitting in the mailbox for a year.
Dave BlanksYes. Well, we don't want to miss out on that.
Jacki McGuire Right?!
Dave BlanksYeah. So what's the total cost? What are the numbers on that renovation?
Jacki McGuire So the post office is a $1.2 million budget. That includes the design services, the purchasing of the lockers, and the overall construction. Our biggest thing is on time and on budget. That's what planning, design and construction does.
Dave BlanksJeff, did she say that correctly?
Jeff PierceShe did! That was perfect.
Dave BlanksOkay. Excellent. If we're done with post office, why don't we move on to Edwin Duncan? So yeah, you can see driving past it. It's in a state now.
Jeff Pierce A state of openness.
Dave BlanksYeah, it’s wide open. the octagon area of it where I used to park. No longer an option for me. And y'all didn't run that past me before. You just.
Jeff Pierce I'm sorry. We we took away your covered, parking area, but however, let me put a plug in our $21.7 million parking deck will be open up. New 600 spots, down beside Holmes Convocation at the end of July.
Dave BlanksIt does look. It looks nice. That thing looks nice. Yeah. Lots of changes to Edwin Duncan. So, where are we on that, Jeff?
Jeff Pierce So right now we are in the middle of getting the final contract awarded. It's been awarded to Vannoy Construction. They've already started. We had a couple early packages that was awarded, which is demolition. That's what you're seeing going on right now. So they've demolished, gone in and opened up, taken out the windows on all three floors. We got all the hazardous material out. There was asbestos in that building. And any time we go in, do a renovation, we go in and we remove all the hazardous material and we go back in with clean material that is not a hazard to anybody in the future. So we've gone through and done that. The building's roughly about 90,000ft² between the three floors. We've got about 26 million to do that renovation. The octagon. We're not going to we're doing some temporary construction there to move some of the art students in like ceramics and stuff like that, though. So that’s in there for a year, because.
Dave BlanksWey is still...
Jeff Pierce Wey is under full construction there.
Dave BlanksRight.
Jeff Pierce So we’ve had to find some extra space to be, very, studious about finding open space to put, these departments into because we're out of swing space.
Dave BlanksAnd if this is the first, campus construction podcast you're listening to, then listen to the previous one if you're interested in hearing about Wey and because, Mike McKenzie and Nick Katers came in and were so kind as to give us a lot of information about that.
Jeff Pierce Yeah. So Edwin Duncan will be totally the college of Fine and Applied Arts. And so you'll have, some labs, you'll have some teaching spaces all on the first floor. You come up to the second floor it’s more the admin is where the dean suite will be at some more teaching spaces, larger classrooms. And then the third floor will be where the faculty will be at.
Jeff Pierce You know, our construction up here, these buildings were built in the 1960s.
Dave BlanksOkay. Edwin Duncan was the 60s.
Jeff Pierce Yes. Yeah. 1960s building...Wey... And so these are 1960s buildings. So we're just going there and gutting them and bringing in all completely new HVAC systems and Electrical systems. Wey was never sprinklered. So we're putting a new sprinkler system in there. Same way with the Edwin Duncan.
Dave BlanksSo Jackie, what have you been doing with Edwin Duncan? I mean, I guess here you haven’t been able to get in there and put anything in there yet.
Jacki McGuire No, but we have started conversations. We're really trying to think about the interior design of Edwin Duncan and Wey Hall together, as two big buildings that are part of the College of Fine and Applied Arts. So, we're looking at how we can use finishes that are similar across both buildings, make them feel like they're part of that same college, and give that college an identity that it hasn't really had in the past.
Jeff Pierce And what we're going to do there is we'll take these design standards or these guidelines. And so, like Jacki will put together an interior package that we’ll be able to go back to future renovations and say, all right, here's what we use. And so it should make the process a lot easier for our faculty and staff as we move forward as we go through the design process.
Dave BlanksGotcha. Jacki, what's something you're excited about that we haven't done? Can you share anything specific?
Jacki McGuire Well, for me, one exciting thing that we've only started talking about in our office is developing some campus standards for interior design. So, currently we have campus standards for a lot of the things that are shops do in their specialties with, you know, electrical, HVAC all those types of things. But we don't have a lot of interior design standards. And if anybody's been to surplus, you'll see that our warehouse is super full of mismatched, old, outdated items that people just don't want.
Dave BlanksSounds cool. I want to get a surplus.
Jacki McGuire So, we're trying to be really thoughtful about when we do buy new furniture. What does that look like? So that we can have things across campus that all feel cohesive. People will be more likely to keep them longer and be able to repurpose them in new places, because everything feels kind of connected. So I'm really excited to kind of improve our App State branding in a way that you feel like you're here without having it pushed in your face. Right. and we just really want to create a great, fun space. I taught last semester, and I had some students tell me they had friends who had really cool spaces on their campuses that they saw on social media.
Dave BlanksJelly.
Jacki McGuire I mean, I was so I'm really trying to, you know, we have cool outdoor spaces, now let's work on the indoor spaces. So we've been really working on some cool, fun ideas, bringing some better identity to campus.
Dave BlanksNice. Well, that is exciting.
Jeff Pierce It also ties back into our sustainability goal as well. So as we standardize our interior design, our furniture, so forth, if we have a need somewhere else when we're renovating a space, we can take that furniture and move it somewhere else.
Dave BlanksRight.
Jeff Pierce Reuse it and repurpose it.
Dave BlanksSo it doesn't end up sad, mismatched and alone in the surplus.
Jacki McGuire Exactly.
Dave BlanksYeah I gotcha. Well, anything else you want to cover before we wrap it up today?
Jeff Pierce Well, yes, there's one other thing. So we started the, campus master plan.
Dave BlanksOkay.
Jeff Pierce And so we were starting down that. We started a data gathering, and some of the areas that we were looking at was outdoor spaces. How can we improve upon that? What we've done, Dave, just let everybody know that we've put that on pause at this point in time.
Jeff Pierce Due to the change in leadership here at the university. We want to just pause that and then we'll pick that up once things get set in the future with the new leadership, then we'll pick that back up. And those are the things that we'll be looking at our campus standards, our guidelines, better meeting spaces outside. How do we utilize our environment? Which is why a biggest number of our kids come here. They love the space here. Then taking that down to Hickory as well, what's going to be the nuances down there that's going to attract the kids to go down there. And what's going to be those key courses and offerings down there.
Dave BlanksOkay. So the master plan right now.
Jeff Pierce Is on hold.
Dave BlanksSo well all right. Thank you. That's a good head's up to have. Thank you. You all thank you so much! Jacki McGuire. Mr. Jeff Pierce, I appreciate you both very, very much for coming in today. And, yeah, thanks a lot.
Jeff Pierce Always a pleasure. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Jacki McGuire Yeah, thanks!
 
 
 

Associate Vice Chancellor of Facilities Management Nick Katers and Vice Provost of Academic Program Development and Strategic Initiatives Mike McKenzie join Dave Blanks in studio to discuss the renovation of Wey Hall.
 
 
 
TRANSCRIPT
Dave Blanks:Hey folks, how's it going? I'm Dave Blanks from University Communications and this is the campus construction update. It's been a moment since I've been in studio, but it's good to be back here. And I'm joined by Nick Katers and Dr. Mike McKenzie. Mike is the... Hey guys, how's it going? I'll say hey to you first.
Nick Katers:Good morning.
Dr. McKenzie:Good, good to be here.
Nick Katers:And how are you?
Dave Blanks:I'm great. I'm doing well. So Mike McKenzie, the vice provost of Academic Program Development and Strategic Initiatives, also the designated Academic Affairs representative for the university's space committee, and the designated person from the provost leadership team who's been working with the associate vice chancellor, Mr. Nick Katers, our other guest on the academic needs related to the Wey Hall renovation. That's the topic of the day, is Wey Hall. Nick Katers, associate vice chancellor of Facilities Management. I'll just give a little information about Wey, and then we're going to address some questions about it. So Wey is the home of the Department of Art. It offers more than 100 course sections to approximately 1,400 students. The building's classrooms are used by University College for general education and for first-year seminar courses. I guess, Nick, when was Wey built? Wey's been there for a little while.
Nick Katers:Right, yeah, that's exactly why we're talking about this today. So Wey Hall was built in 1976. It was the oldest building that the university had that had never been touched by a holistic renovation, so it was approaching end of life on several critical systems to include the electrical and plumbing. The bathrooms were out of date. The elevator was probably not functional about half the time, and there was no fire suppression or sprinkler system in the building. Now there is a fully functional alarm system, but given all of those faults and the impending loss of some of those critical systems, we judged it was time to give Wey a full comprehensive renovation.
Dave Blanks:Right. Yeah. Well that makes sense. Yeah, 50 years is a long time and it's had smaller stuff done, like you said, but not, what was your terminology for it? Comprehensive.
Nick Katers:Comprehensive renovation, essentially where we gut the whole thing and start over.
Dave Blanks:So that's what we're getting into now and we will talk about that in a little bit, but I understand there have been recent safety concerns about Wey, so if y'all would like to speak to those, maybe?
Nick Katers:During spring break, we had to do some destructive testing of the floors between the first and second floor. So we chose to do that where the students weren't there. The contractor ended up drilling some bores through the concrete deck of the second floor, and a couple of pieces of concrete fell. One fell into an unoccupied office at the time, and some other smaller pieces fell onto the ceiling tiles above one of the first floor labs. At no time did any of the concrete fall through an occupied area.
Dave Blanks:Yeah. So that was a big concern for people and there were some different storylines going around out there, but thank you for clarifying that. So the renovation currently going on, when did it start?
Nick Katers:Well, we've been working on the planning for about two years now, but we really started last summer by closing down the second and third floors. We decided because of a lack of similar type lab and industrial arts classrooms to keep the first floor open for this academic year while we work to find alternative spaces. But for the most part, the renovations are proceeding as scheduled on the second and third floor. The third floor is actually now starting to put new walls up. It's really looking pretty good.
Dave Blanks:So was it completely gutted?
Nick Katers:The second and third floors have been completely gutted. All the internal walls, all the bathrooms, everything was essentially pulled down so that we could start over. We had to run new electrical, new plumbing, new IT systems, HVAC improvements, fire suppression systems. All of those things are being added. And we're taking, similar to what we did with Sanford, we're taking the old internal elevator and moving it to the outside to be able to buy some of that space back for program area.
Dave Blanks:Gotcha. Yeah, it looks cool on Sanford. I like the visual of that. Maybe Mike, I don't know if you could address this, but are faculty and staff still in Wey right now?
Dr. McKenzie:So there are classes on that first floor, and those are those studio kind of classes, think your huge kilns and wood shops and metal shops. But the second and third floor are completely vacant, and the offices have been also vacated already. And those people have found homes across campus, a lot of them are in East Hall during the renovation. So the only active place right now in Wey Hall are those first floor studio spaces that, as Nick mentioned, are very unique. When Sanford shut down, it was just a matter of using our class software to move those classes to other locations across campus. And that works fine if you just need a classroom of 25 people, but when you need kilns and saws and those kinds of things, those classrooms don't exist. And so the decision was made in consultation with the academic leadership of the college, and consultation with the faculty, to keep the first floor open this year because it is the most unique space from an academic perspective we have on campus, I would say.
Dave Blanks:Okay. How is App addressing the student learning experience? So students are... If they've had to move out of Wey and faculty and staff as well, where are they working now?
Dr. McKenzie:So again, the studios are still open in Wey, so they have had access to all the equipment that they would've had under any other condition prior to this semester. Some of the other classes have been moved to East Hall. We have a class that Turchin has been nice enough to offer some space up. So if it's more of a traditional class, we've been able to move it really anywhere. If it is a very art-specific class where art is... They leave a trail sometimes.
Dave Blanks:My dad was an artist, so yes. My mom will attest to that.
Dr. McKenzie:Right. So a lot of those are in East Hall because we're not as concerned with paint and materials getting on the floor, the walls, as we would be if say I placed them in the College of Business for example.
Dave Blanks:Right. Yeah. Okay, I see what you mean. You did mention East is a space that's being utilized. Can y'all talk a little bit about safety inspections that have occurred in Wey, in East? I understand there have been some, maybe Nick you can handle that?
Nick Katers:That. Yeah, sure. Let me start with East. So East Hall, obviously a former residence hall built in 1952, built before the Americans with Disabilities Act was put in place. So there are some challenges that we have worked to address in East Hall. We're lucky to have three different level entrances into East Hall, and we've been able to accommodate every request that has come in. East Hall, again is an older building on campus. It has steam heat that's able to keep it climate controlled during the winter. What it doesn't have is a air conditioning system, and we still have a number of older buildings on campus that do not have air conditioning systems. So I'm happy that we've had a relatively mild spring so far, but East Hall was slated to be removed from inventory in the next couple of years. We had stopped using it as a residence hall, because we had the nice new beautiful residence halls on West Campus, and this provided us an opportunity to have some swing space while we were renovating both Wey and Duncan Hall.And so it's hard to take two academic buildings offline at the same time, but we were lucky enough to get this money from the legislature, so we had to move with what we had before prices went up too much. As far as safety inspections go, we've done multiple safety inspections at both East Hall and Wey Hall. At Wey Hall, we have ongoing daily inspections by Meter Construction, who's the general contractor. There are weekly inspections by the Office of Planning Design and Construction. And we also have an independent safety consultant that has been commissioned by Meter Construction to do that.Addressing some of the issues with the fire system, the Office of the State Fire Marshal came out on 1 April and conducted a holistic review of a previous inspection they had done in the fall. They passed the system. The fire alarm system is fully functional for all the studio spaces on the first floor, and they had no recommendations. We've had some internal inspections continue. We've had OSHA inspections that have all come through, and really the only findings that they have are to keep the access and egress areas clear. Sometimes we'll have stuff, not just from the contractor but from the students, to allow their pieces of work that they're working on there, sometimes that'll accumulate outside of the studio areas, and we just have to keep reinforcing that those access egress areas need to be kept clear. But right now there are no findings from the Office of the State Fire Marshal or the OSHA inspectors.
Dave Blanks:So Nick, you mentioned it, the state legislature allocated quite a bit of money for the upgrade of Wey to bring it to a state-of-the-art experience for our art students. So how much did we receive?
Nick Katers:24.1 million is our current level of funding. Yeah, I would've told you when that was allocated in 2019, 2020, that that would've been more than enough, but we're still struggling with some of the inflationary hikes that have gone up over the last couple of years to bring it in on budget. So the original allocation for Wey Hall was 19 million. We asked for an inflationary adjustment, which gave us additional money from the legislature, of an additional 4 million, and then we added some of our own internal carry-forward dollars to bring it up to its total amount. So we have continually adjusted to account for the inflationary impact on building construction. We're going to have the first floor, the third floor are going to be completely finished. The second floor will be mostly finished, and then it'll be completed by App State facilities and still opening on time.
Dave Blanks:Great. So well, what are the upgrades? What's this place going to look like, and when is the completion date?
Nick Katers:So the completion date is scheduled right now for the summer of 2025. That's a pretty conservative estimate. We're making great progress right now, but typically we don't reopen buildings during the school year just because there's so much that has to be moved in and out. So we're continuing to move through the renovation process with good efficiency right now. Obviously you can see the most major change is the elevator towers that are going to be pushed out to the outside of the building. We've moved some of the mechanical spaces to a new block expansion area outside the building, and we're also putting an external kiln pad outside of the building so we don't have to have the high heat producing items inside the studio spaces. Along with the normal life health safety issues, we're going to be upgrading all of the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, HVAC systems. There will be a fully functional sprinkler and fire suppression system, state-of-the-art IT upgrades will go in, as well as a new suite of furniture and equipment for most of the spaces.
Dave Blanks:Sounds great. So one of the main concerns that students have right now, I feel like, is where are they going in the fall? In three weeks, the students will be out of Wey. So Mike, what's that going to look like? What's next?
Dr. McKenzie:Right. So this has been a really long process, and Nick and I have worked together with both of our offices repeatedly to really examine every possible solution to find homes for studios. We looked at several off-campus facilities. Honestly, the biggest problem we have with off-campus facilities are the permitting of the use of those buildings, renovations in those buildings and AppalCart access to those buildings as well. And as you can imagine, when you're only doing something temporarily, in this case for a year or less, how much money do you want to spend to upgrade a building that's not even yours, to then move right out?
Dave Blanks:That is a challenge, yeah.
Dr. McKenzie:So that didn't work. We looked at some of our existing spaces off campus, such as the Sofield building, for example.
Dave Blanks:What's been going on in there? I'm sorry to interrupt.
Dr. McKenzie:Yeah, so Sofield building is already a Fine and Applied Arts space. They do a lot of research. STBE is out there, and it's also where the solar car is. And so they do have some of that kind of equipment and it has that studio feel to it. And so we did examine that, and what I would say where we landed with Sofield, a couple issues did come up where the parking is limited for an off-campus building. And so that was an issue. AppalCart access in theory stops at eight o'clock, and these studio artists have to do a lot of outside of class project time, and eight o'clock may sound late, but they have a lot of projects where they work incredibly late and sometimes traffic with the AppalCart, and offsetting every class in Fine and Applied Arts by 30 minutes to the rest of campus, it was a possible solution, but it was going to be more disruptive than where we landed.And where we landed is basically space that already exists on campus. And so most Fine and Applied Arts studio art will be located in the Edwin Duncan Octagon for this upcoming year. And the things about the Octagon where we landed that we really like, number one, it is on campus. And speaking to someone from academic affairs, when you start spreading out faculty all over the town of Boone, it loses that department feel. You don't get to interact with your colleagues, there isn't that cross interdisciplinary work that can occur. So having them in the Octagon has an advantage of keeping them on the core of campus. Obviously, having them on the core of campus, the security, the parking, all of those things are already there because Duncan's part of campus. And so, the Octagon is not undergoing renovation and so if you've ever walked through the Octagon, it really is a big wide open space.And again, these studio arts need bigger spaces. They don't work in traditional classrooms. And so the Octagon allows us that kind of flexibility to move most of these programs in. We've done one walkthrough with the studio art faculty already. We're doing a second walkthrough soon. And that walkthrough is really just to game plan exactly what goes in what corner. And we're working with Nick's folks to properly make sure electrical systems and water systems and ventilation, because some of the projects, they do produce things. And so we're making sure from a safety perspective we're where we need to be. But I think Duncan far and away was the best option for, I think, our current students, is going to be the least disruptive for them, the least disruptive for the faculty, and really the least disruptive for campus by already keeping them on our main campus, so.
Dave Blanks:So when we're talking to Octagon, are we talking the lowest level as well, like the parking level?
Dr. McKenzie:So most things will be located in the classroom portion of the Octagon-
Dave Blanks:The actual... Okay, okay.
Dr. McKenzie:But to your point, there will be things that are located adjacent to the Octagon where we need to produce sparks and have, again, ventilation and things like that. But no, most of the things will be located in the Octagon, but to your point, when we say the Octagon, I would say we're really talking about the entire footprint of the Octagon.
Dave Blanks:Gotcha. Okay. All right, cool. Well that's interesting to know. And as somebody who parked there pretty frequently, I'm glad to see it back in use and for a good purpose. So that's great to know. Okay, well, so the Octagon's a great space. Is the entire department going to be located in there? It seems kind of small.
Dr. McKenzie:Right, so most things will be in the Octagon, but we've been meeting with Fine and Applied Arts and we have a couple additional spaces that will meet their needs. One being an existing Fine and Applied Arts building of Harper. And while Harper does not currently host art, it does host things like sustainable technology in the built environment, sustainable development, and there are some construction type applied design equipment in there. And so there's an opportunity for them to share some of those spaces. We also have worked across units. We have a large space in Holmes that is available for printing or some other large-scale machine if need be. And we also have, again, worked with the Turchin Center and they've identified two spaces we can use as classrooms. And so like I said, we are still meeting with the departments to do a final walkthrough of Octagon to figure out exactly what we can fit in there safety-wise and space-wise. And then the overflow would move to either Holmes Center, Turchin or Harper as needed. But everything is going to be kept on main campus.
Dave Blanks:And we should clarify that it's not the entire Edwin Duncan that's being used for this, it's just the section that is the Octagon. I think we've probably made that clear. But yeah, so Wey's going to be pretty awesome. I've seen the renderings that are on the future site, that's appstate.edu/future, you can go on there, you can see what you guys have planned and get more information. It's going to be state-of-the-art, it's going to be awesome. And there's some upheaval right now, but it's not permanent.
Dr. McKenzie:Right. I graduated from App actually in 1999, and I was an athletic training major in varsity gym, and I looked across the street and there was Holmes Center getting ready to open up for my academic program when I left.
Dave Blanks:Man.
Dr. McKenzie:And I think this is just that. We are fully renovating that building for the first time, and it is going to be set up for the future for decades after this. And I think the studio space is going to be what the students need. The classroom space is going to be what the students need. The building's going to be safer. And really what I think of the most exciting things around there, it's going to have the feel of an art building. I don't know that it has that feel right now, other than students have very creatively decorated Wey Hall in ways that they see fit. But I think we're going to have opportunity to display their work in a different way. And it's just going to be a building for a 2024 education in art moving forward. And I'm really excited about that. And I think our future arts students and our current art students will too.
Dave Blanks:Absolutely. Well, Nick and Mike, thank you both so much for being with me today. It's great to have the campus construction update back. Great to have you back in studio. Nick, you've been here before. Mike, it's your first time. But guys, thank you so much. And if people want to get more information, of course, like I just said, you can go to the appstate.edu/future site. Thank you both very much.
Nick Katers:Thanks.
Dr. McKenzie:Thank you.