Pirates’ Village under way

     Don’t get used to being able to find parking in the new parking lot across Tully Road just yet.
     The year-long closure of  Founders Hall for renovation will relocate classes into portable classrooms that will occupy the entire lot next to the Journalism and Electronics buildings. You know what that means: the already difficult parking situation at MJC is going to become even more frustrating.
     “Parking will be different, of course, because we’re going to have buildings where students use to put their cars.,” says Patrick Bettencourt, Dean of the Literature and Language Division.
     However, faculty and staff are doing everything in their power to make the transition into the portables as smooth as possible.
     “We’re doing everything we can to minimize disruption to teaching, to faculty’s work, and to staff’s work,” said Bettencourt.
     Some courses now on East Campus will be offered on West Campus.
     The renovation process is set to begin at the end of this semester, and will go into Spring and possibly Summer 2011. At the beginning of April, the parking lot will be closed off to students to begin prep work for the portable classrooms.
     Students can expect to see 39 portables occupying the parking lot. All portables will be “smart,” and serve multiple purposes.
    “Faculty and students can expect to see in a Pirates’ Village classroom the same capability in terms of technology that they see now in a typical Literature and Language Arts Founders Hall ‘smart’ classroom,” Bettencourt said.
     Each double-wide unit will be a classroom or seven-to-eight faculty offices. There will be one “mega module” that will be a computer lab. The Math Center and Writing (drop-in) Center will also occupy a portable unit.
     Bettencourt explains that faculty and staff are “being careful in the planning to keep all the important student services out there and continuing to make them available to students this year.”
     With all the budget cuts affecting the college, where is the money for the renovation coming from?
     In 2004, Measure E was approved by local voters to renovate college buildings, including Founders Hall. A certain amount of funding provided by Measure E was allotted to each project.
     “Founders Hall has roughly a budget of $12 million dollars, the vast majority of which is for the construction and renovation of the building itself,” said Bettencourt.
     When Founders Hall re-opens, students and faculty will notice a drastic difference. Bettencourt says
“Founders Hall is long overdue for a face lift. If you walk down the halls here, I think you’ll agree the building looks tired.”
      Some of the improvements you can expect to see include refinished classroom walls, bigger faculty offices, and  ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance.
     When students see “PV” on their schedules for next semester, that means the class will be held in the portables. Students should expect to see maps and signage on campus re-directing them to the Pirates’ Village portables by summer or fall.
     It may seem like the loss of Founders Hall for a year will be chaotic, but Bettencourt is reassuring.
     “We’re really doing everything we can think of to minimize any issues that might come up or to make this as easy as possible for faculty, staff and students to transition out there for the next year,” he says.
 

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