AACC to renovate old buildings on campus

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Dan Elson

The Dragun building renovations will include an addition that will house the Math Department.

Vance Wild, Reporter

Over the next four years, the now-empty Florestano building on West Campus will become a hub for student services and technology.

The Dragun building on the Quad, which houses physical sciences, is half empty, and the college plans to put an addition on it and move the Math Department there by 2027.

Vice President for Learning Resources Management Melissa Beardmore said the Dragun renovations “will allow for synergy and collaboration for STEM-related activities. So at the end, that project will provide new state-of-the-art laboratories for the physical sciences.”

The buildings emptied out in August 2021 when health and life sciences programs moved to the new Health and Life Sciences building.

The college has budgeted $46.1 million for the Dragun building compared to the $22.9 million for Florestano. Florestano renovations will start within two years and will finish by July 2026.

“We’ll have more student events space” for an expanded Health and Wellness Center, student life offices, the campus food pantry, the Student Government Association and possibly the Military and Veterans Resource Center, Beardmore said.

The Dragun building renovations will begin in 2025 and last for approximately two years, Beardmore said. The project will add 28,000 square feet to the 40,000-square-foot building.

The college will add “better equipped, more modern” laboratories for the physical sciences programs to the Dragun building, which will finish by around July 2027, Beardmore said.

The college hasn’t renovated the Dragun building in 30 years, according to Beardmore. It got a new roof this summer.