Construction on the maintenance and operations buildings, the new instructional buildings housing humanities, the central plant expansion, and more projects are in the works at Fullerton College.

The new humanities building will have 48 general lecture rooms, two computer labs/classrooms, and several more administrative and faculty rooms. Over 120 individual rooms were designed with a total budget of $54 million.

Additionally, there will be three staircases, a courtyard with one decorative water fountain, one large room for meetings of up to 75 people and its own stage to host events. Each floor will have four restrooms total: Two gender-neutral one-stall restrooms, one male restroom with multiple stalls, and one female restroom with multiple stalls.

Megan Moscol, the assistant project manager for Campus Capital Projects, predicts that the new courtyard will be a new favorite area.

“A lot of the spaces you already get the feel and the shape of them, and there’s going to be a lot of places where students and faculty alike are going to want to linger… and I think that courtyard is going to be one of them,” Moscol said.

Due to the new instructional building’s large construction plans, the central plant needed to be expanded to provide cooling to the new campus size more efficiently.

“So there’s one central source of cooling, and it circulates chilled water through a loop on campus, and we blow air across the cold water to cool down the buildings. Then the water comes back in that same loop to that central location where it gets cooled down again,” Moscol explained.

Initially, the plans were to upgrade the old central plant but it needed major repair and instead was determined to be replaced. The new central plant can now cool down a substantially larger capacity than before and is energy efficient.

Next on the list for construction projects are the 300 and 500 buildings. Fullerton College is bidding for renovations, but there was an issue with their first bid. Although the total budget is $35 million, the college is attempting to keep the cost of renovations significantly under that amount.

“We don’t want to knock down the 300 building… it’s irreplaceable. It was the first building on campus. It’s got all of that cultural significance and heritage,” Moscol said.

Renovations to the 300 and 500 buildings include upgraded restrooms with no touch features, upgraded elevators, adding gender-neutral restrooms, network infrastructures such as data, and the cinema class will have upgraded sound and controls.

“The demo stations in the new [and renovated] buildings will be the latest and greatest… the nicest projectors and everything up to snuff with the latest technology,” Moscol assured.

The goal for the 300 building is to keep as many historically significant features as possible. These include the windows, light fixtures, and the outside appearance of the building.

Some of the student service centers, such as the Veterans Resource Center and Umoja, were in the 500 buildings and have been removed due to the new construction plans. Their new home will be south of Chapman Ave where the residential buildings are currently.

The residential buildings will be the Chapman Newell building that will incorporate meeting rooms, space for the food bank, and other student services that use to be located in the 500 building. Near that space will also be the music and drama complex.

Fullerton College spoke with the Veterans Resource Center and asked what kinds of necessary features and designs their space would need before construction plans were drawn.

If bidding is completed by June, the Chapman Newell building will begin construction around the summer of 2023 and be completed simultaneously as the maintenance and operations buildings toward the end of 2024.

The up-and-coming Centennial parking structure was the next project however, those plans have been pushed back for the foreseeable future.

By spring 2022, Sherbeck Field will receive upgrades as well consisting of 2000 seats with new bleachers, a press box, new lighting, and a new sound system. Construction will begin by the end of this year.

For more information on existing and planned construction projects, visit Fullerton College’s Campus Projects website. To watch the construction process on the instruction building visit Fullerton College’s webcam.