The parking lot next to the Cal State Long Beach nursing building will soon be transformed into an addition to the existing nursing building to house classrooms, computer labs and offices.
The groundbreaking ceremony will be held Oct. 28 for the new single-story teaching building, which is expected to be ready in 10 months and open for occupancy August 2010.
According to the CSULB Web site, the project cost approximately $5.5 million when it was approved by the California State University board of trustees in fall 2008. At the time, construction was expected to begin earlier this semester in August and completed for occupancy in June 2010.
“Originally we were looking at a one-and-a-half-story building, and that would have given us two more classrooms and 14 faculty offices, but we were short $2 million,” said Loucine Huckabay, director of the CSULB nursing program.
With the new building, it will not be possible to add anything later on.
“The answer is because of lack of money,” Huckabay said. “If we could have raised $2 million more, they were going to add a second floor. We raised $5.5 million dollars, which is enough to build only a one-story building. The proposed one-story nursing building will have a foundation to support only one floor, with no possibility of adding to it in the future.”
According to the CSULB Web site, the state and the CSULB Foundation are funding the project.
The 10,800 square-foot building will take over 40 to 50 faculty parking spaces in Lot 2. Faculty have been given student-held parking spaces in Lot 18, which has employee and restricted parking spaces. Lot 18 is located on the west side of campus next to Student Health Services.
The new building will give the nursing department more space. The department currently has about more than 1,000 students and two classrooms that can seat only 30 students each.
Huckabay said nursing students have been forced to spread all over campus and to sit on classroom floors because of the lack of space.
The building addition will have a computer lab, three classroom labs, five faculty offices and a conference room that will enable faculty members to have teleconferences. Two of the classrooms can seat 60 students and one of them will seat 30.
The computer lab will be able to seat 50 students and allow nursing classes to have two separate sittings for a class instead of the three to four separate sittings they have now.
The structure of the new classrooms will be flexible and allow chairs, stretchers and beds to be moved around so that professors will be able to demonstrate all the skills nurses need.
The nursing department has also been in need of faculty offices. According to Huckabay, most of the faculty members do not have an office of their own and have to share with another faculty member. Huckabay’s office is an old storage room converted by her predecessor.
“We have not had anything built for the past 40 to 45 years,” Huckabay said.