December 3 is the date for the official groundbreaking for Metro State’s new Student Success Building on the Auraria Campus.
The new, 4-story, 145,000 square foot structure will be built at the corner of 9th Street and Auraria Parkway, and will represent the first building in the newly designated Metropolitan State College of Denver “neighborhood” within the larger Auraria Higher Education campus. Here’s a post from about a year ago showing the building’s site and its place within what will become the Metro State quad.
Metro State’s Student Success Building will serve as the home for the college’s new “one-stop-shop” registration center, the First Year Student Success Program, the Community Action Theater, the Center for Innovation, and other critical support, administrative, and student-support services. The $62 million project is being financed through federal stimulus subsidized bonds, backed by a special assessment approved by Metro State students in the Spring 2009.
The new building was designed by RNL Design of Denver. Here are the latest (and final, I believe) renderings of the new building. View is from the 9th Street and Auraria Parkway intersection looking southwest:
The new Student Success Building is scheduled to open April 2012.
Coming soon to DenverInfill… details on Metro State’s new Hospitality Learning Center, scheduled for groundbreaking February 2011.
Any idea what that material is going to be used for the stone/plaster surfaces? The second rendering seems to depict something of higher quality than the brick and red plaster surfaces currently used on the Auraria campus, but its hard to tell exactly what it is, as is usually the case in renderings.
Several projects in Denver seem to have benefited from stimulus funds and have created much needed jobs in our fine city at a crucial economic period in history. Regarding the building, it seems as though the architects paid more attention to the pedestrian experience from all access points and to how the building relates to Auraria Pkwy in the final version. Any future info on what will become of the Kacey Fine furniture building across the street would be appreciated. Thanks for the update.
They started ripping up the parking lot on Monday, and they already have some quite heavy machinery on the site.