New building, new possibilities

BY GALINA TISHCHENKO
STAFF WRITER 

The groundbreaking ceremony for a new classroom building on campus will take place on May 2. The new facility promises more space and more research opportunities to USF St. Petersburg’s College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Marine Science.

Jim Grant, director of facilities, planning and construction, said the new building will occupy parking lot number two, which is commonly referred to as the Davis parking lot. Once completed, the 34,000 square feet building will stand two stories tall. The first floor will have a total of eight general classrooms, two of which will be large enough for 58 students and six with the sitting capacity of 48 students. The second floor will accommodate four instructional labs and eight research labs. The new facility will be split between the two colleges.

The expected completion date of the project is August 2009, Grant said. The construction site will be set up at the end of June this year, so the parking lot will stay open until the end of the current semester.

The construction and equipment of the new venture is paid for by the Public Education Capital Outlay Fund, a state-sponsored funding program. The budget for the construction alone is $9 million; the furnishing and equipment are additional, bringing the total to about $12 million, Grant said.

The building had been put into the university development plan to be funded by the state a while ago, said Frank Biafora, the dean of the college of arts and sciences. Biafora said the new building will be very beneficial for the school.

“We are running out of space,” he said. “This building [is going] to be ready in perfect time to handle the growing student population we anticipate.”

The expectant growth of the student population is supposed to increase by about 3 percent a year, according to the university’s strategic plan.

In addition to the new classroom space, the building will open new horizons for the field of scientific research for faculty, staff and students.

“Our current facilities—although [they] have helped to get us to where we are today, they certainly are not going to be able to take us to where we want to go in the future,” Biafora said.

He also said he hopes for future possible synergies with the faculty of the College of Marine Science, a Tampa-based program.

Associate Dean Mark Pezzo agreed with Biafora that the major benefit is extra space.

“One of the biggest problems that we have as a growing university is space,” Pezzo said, adding that the additional classrooms will increase available teaching space by about 30 percent.

The position of the new facility is going to take up most of the space of Davis parking lot, but the inhabitants of the Davis Hall are not very concerned.

“Sure, it won’t be as convenient,” Jill McCracken, an assistant professor of English whose office is in Davis Hall, said about parking. “But I don’t think I would say we shouldn’t have this building because of that.”

Another professor, S. Morgan Gresham, also has an office in Davis Hall. Gresham said she is a little saddened about losing her close parking spot.

“However, the parking garage seems fairly convenient, too,” she added.

Although most students seem unaware of the construction site that will soon break ground, many of those who do know said they are not worried about extra walking time from the garage.

“I think it’s good for the school,” Brittany Berg, a business student, said. “If there is enough parking in the garage, I don’t think it should be a problem.”

“There is definitely enough space at the parking garage,” Ty Fraser, a political science major said. “I used to go to Tampa [and] parking there was horrible; coming here parking was, like, not bad at all.”

 “It’s not going to look good,” Jordan Brown, accounting major said about the construction site. “It’s not going to be good for trying to bring people here.”

However, he added that he did not mind parking in the garage.

University authorities recognize there might be an issue with parking on campus during the construction period.

“Parking will definitely be adjusted during the building phase,” Biafora said. “Most people will have now to move over to the parking garage, which it was what it was initially built for. Most universities have parking dilemma, but we don’t.”

Pezzo said the parking garage was designed with the construction of other buildings in mind, so he thinks it will have enough space for everybody.

“It is a psychological gap,” he said. “People have trouble with the idea that they [are] going to have to walk a block from [the] parking garage to Davis Hall.”

Gavan Benson, owner of The Tavern at Bayboro, said he did not expect to encounter parking issues because the restaurant’s parking spaces do not belong to the university.

Benson said he was happy about the construction of the new building.

“Sounds great to me,” he said. “More people on campus translates to usually more people coming here to eat or drink.”