Ccs Campuses To Get New Facilities For Students Additions Include Expansions To Fitness, Student Centers

Sat., Feb. 5, 2000

By Wendy Harris wendyh@spokesman.com

Students attending Community Colleges of Spokane can look forward to several campus improvements in the coming year, including a fitness center expansion at one college and a larger, modernized student center at the other.

Spokane Falls Community College is expected to complete a 10,200-square-foot addition to its Student Fitness Center by mid-September, complete with a new gymnasium and modern weight-lifting room. Construction of the $1.4 million project began in December.

Meanwhile, Spokane Community College’s Lair Student Center will get an 11,400-square-foot addition, expanding the facility’s cafeteria, lobby and bookstore. Also planned is extensive remodeling throughout the existing 84,600-square-foot building. The $3.8 million project is slated to begin in March.

“The architects have come up with a way to open it up and make it a more pleasant place,” said Tay Conrad, CCS’s vice chancellor for business and finance. “There are going to be high ceilings, better colors, plantings and open doorways. It should change the whole look of that building.”

The Lair building is considered the campus hub, where students gather to eat, socialize, study and attend university events.

With the fitness center addition, SFCC will be able to expand its intramural sports program, said Maury Ray, athletic director for Community Colleges of Spokane.

Currently, SFCC has just one full-sized gymnasium, which has been shared by both intercollegiate and intramural teams.

“It’s been a real scheduling problem to have time and space needed for a good intramural program,” Ray said.

The existing fitness center also will undergo a 3,000-square-foot remodeling, making way for a new weight room.

While the existing facility already has a circuit-training room with weight machines, the college’s free-weights facility is in a room out under the stadium, stadium, some 500 yards away from the Fitness Center.

“During the winter quarter, they hardly go out there because they have to walk through the snow,” Ray said.

The new weight room will be twice the size of the old one.

Lydig Construction of Spokane is building the fitness center addition, with the design by ALSC Architects of Spokane. A contract is expected to be awarded soon for the Lair project, which has been designed by Integrus Architecture of Spokane.

Both projects are being paid for with local CCS funds, including revenues from college enterprises and student activity fees.

Also this year, SFCC is planning to expand its library’s second floor at a cost of $803,000. And SCC will build a $265,000 addition to its Fire Science Building, providing additional space for firetruck maintenance. Work on both state-funded projects is expected to begin in June.

Construction continues on SCC’s 40,000-square-foot addition to its Allied Health Building. The two-story wing, designed by DeNeff, Deeble, Barton Associates of Spokane, is being added to the building’s north side and is on schedule to be finished in June 2001. Remodeling of the existing 32,000-square foot building will follow and should be completed by the end of 2001.

The state-funded project, costing about $12 million, will provide needed space to the overcrowded and outdated building.

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