Semester Kicks Off With New Students and Completed Parking Structure

Cal State Fullerton will kick off the fall semester next week with the opening of the campus’s largest building.

The Nutwood Parking Structure in Parking Lot D, near the corner of Nutwood Avenue and State College Boulevard, will bring significant parking relief for the approximately 31,200 students expected for the first day of fall classes on Monday, Aug. 23.

More than 3,000 students have enrolled for classes offered at the El Toro Campus.

The projected first day figures include additional students admitted following passage of this year’s state budget, which provided increased enrollment funding for California State University campuses. (For more on how the state budget affected the California State University, go to http://www.calstate.edu.)

The five-story parking facility is but one of many construction projects currently underway or slated to begin later this year.

The structure, which took 14 months to complete, has 2,540 spaces that increase the total number of available campus parking slots to 11,000, said Joe Ferrer, director of Parking and Transportation.

Because of its size, the architecture was designed to create a large, unobstructed area and decorative screening that allows for air and light to enter the structure, said Jay Bond, associate vice president for facilities management. In the evening, the building’s lighting will create a soft glow seen from the outside so that residences on the south and west of the facility will not be disturbed, he added.

Ramps are located on one side of the garage with stairs in all four corners of the building. Emergency blue phones, which connect directly to University Police dispatchers, are located on all levels. (For more on the physical aspects of this building, please go to www.fullerton.edu/extra.)

Meanwhile, construction of the 102,000-square-foot Performing Arts Center continues.

When completed – scheduled for summer 2005 – the facility will include a 700-seat concert hall, studio and black box theaters, scene and costume areas, dance studios and faculty offices.

Upcoming construction projects include the Fullerton Arboretum visitor center, State College Parking Structure, student recreation center and
College of Business and Economics building.

Orange County-based Dougherty & Dougherty Architects LLP have designed the Arboretum complex, which will include a gift shop and conference center with classrooms, museum and meeting area. A new greenhouse and additional parking are part of the project.

General contractor for the project is Construct One Corp., which previously worked on the Student Health and Counseling Center addition.

In design are two structures that will go in Parking Lot B: the State College Parking Structure and the student recreation center. Architectural firm Langdon Wilson of Irvine is designing both buildings. Construction on the parking structure is slated to begin in spring 2005.

At press time, agreements were being finalized for an architect to design the 190,000-square-foot business building.

Classroom refurbishment continues in the Humanities-Social Sciences Building with the installation of new desks, chairs and white boards, said Willem van der Pol, director of physical plant.