Since its demolition in Dec. 2012, the old Business Education building is long gone and the new Liberal Arts and DSPS building has taken shape, with almost more than 75 percent of it completed.
Cerritos College President Dr. Linda Lacy seems pleased with the progress of the construction.
“It’s what we call, ‘on schedule,’ and on budget so that’s good … and we hope to offer classes in summer of 2014,” Lacy said.
Director of the physical plant, David Moore, said that the building is still on track for its completion date of summer 2014. Moore added that the building should be open for the second session of summer classes.
This date was threatened during the Jan. 22 Board of Trustees meeting when project manger Tilden-Coil came to the Board (of Trustees) with a new bid for contractors.
The bid came from Dalke & Sons Construction Co., Inc., based out of Riverside Ca., who will be working on low voltage work for the Liberal Arts and DSPS building, so it can meet its expected opening date.
Low voltage work includes things such as non electrical wiring like cables for computers, alarm systems or any audio/visual equipment.
Some of the board members, like Marisa Perez, who is currently serving as board secretary, felt a bit disappointed during the meeting when presented with the one bid offer by Tilden-Coil.
Since there was only one offer, some board members seemed cautious about voting to approve the bid. If the bid was not approved, the building completion date could have been set back about 3 months, putting classes at shorter reach for students in the summer sessions.
“If we weren’t trying to make a deadline, we might have said, ‘we only have one bid, let’s back up, let’s look at how we went about this and re-bid,’ but we really want to bring this building,” Moore said.
During the meeting, Perez stated that she was “losing confidence” in Tilden-Coil as project manger. Perez felt that a local construction company may have worked out better for the community.
The term “putting the community back in Cerritos Community College” was used by board vice president Sandra Salazar during the meeting in reference to the contractor bids.
Although the board approved the bid for the contractors, Moore said that he and Tilden-Coil could have done a better job of getting more bids, but with the bid approved, they are moving along with construction.
Lacy said that the new Liberal Arts and DSPS building will have a few
more classrooms than the current Liberal Arts building has.
“It’s
not a huge expansion in space, but it’s updated and I think more
usable. There are .. more multipurpose classrooms,” Lacy said.
This
building will have more “flexibility,” according to Lacy, with
classrooms that can easily be switched from a lecture room to a meeting
room.
With the first floor of the building hosting classrooms
for the disabled students of Cerritos College, Lacy said it will be a
vast improvement from them having to go to multiple locations across
campus, now they have a new home with this building.
