Colorado State University begins construction on new Clark Building, expected to serve nearly every student on campus
The most utilized building on Colorado State University's Fort Collins campus is officially receiving a facelift and new addition, as the Andrew Clark Building project officially broke ground.
"Clark," as most students know it, comprises of three wings. The A-wing is known for its massive classrooms. The B-wing was known for office spaces for staff. The C-wing is known to house the College of Liberal Arts. However, the university recently demolished Clark-B and started gutting Clark-A. It is part of a revitalization project which will cost more than $137 million to complete in the coming years.
The construction comes 60 years after the original building opened to students at the heart of CSU's campus. The facility hosts nearly 100% of students on campus for at least one class during their time at CSU.
However, as the campus and university has grown in recent decades, the building had clearly been left in the past. After calls to remodel the building by students and staff for more than 15 years, CSU secured the funding from the state to move forward with the project.
"It has been a long time coming," said Kjerstin Thorson, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at CSU.
"It is the center vein of campus. Every single student walks past it. Almost everybody takes a class in the building," said Emily Reese, president of the CLA representative counsel.
The honeycomb bricks that surround Clark A will be stripped off. The exterior and interior will be given facelifts. Clark B will be completely replaced by a 90,000 square foot building. The new building, which the university broke ground on, will add more than 1,000 new classroom seats, new labs and additional meeting space.
"The sentiments for a new building have been powerful for years," Thorson said.
Some from the university say staff and alumni have reached out asking to keep a piece of the honeycomb exterior from the buildings for their own collection. The university also plans to use some of it within the new structures for decorative use to pay honor to the history of the old facility.
However, most seem to be perfectly fine with seeing the old design being removed.
"It was a very unique building, visually. It was old. It was dark and sometimes a little dingy. But, that was part of the unique Clark charm," Reese said. "I think a lot of people will be happy to see it gone, or at least get a facelift."
Unfortunately, for those who work and study in the Clark C wing, the remodel isn't impacting their classrooms and office space in any way other than construction inconvenience. The university was unable to secure enough funding at the time to be able to address the C-wing, which is visibly falling apart from the exterior.
The C-wing can be seen with cracked and peeling paint, parts of the roof starting to fall off along the side of the structure and other eyesores. However, some staff within the building told CBS News Colorado they still felt the building was fine for now.
The university plans to address that wing at a later date.
More than 50,000 liberal arts students, alone, had to endure Clark of the past. However, the future of Clark is quite literally brighter as the university prioritizes adding natural light into the new B-wing.
"This new building is where we will be building the future of the college of liberal arts. But, it is really going to be the engine for student success at CSU," Thorson said.
"The quality of your education is visibly represented," Reese said. "The college deserves it. The students deserve it. The building itself deserves it."
CSU hopes to open their new B-wing and the renovated A-wing in the coming years.
