Pierce College has two construction projects underway in the Media and Art departments, but there are delays due to budget issues.
The new art department project, called Academic West, is a new building that will feature an architecture lab, an art gallery and a graphic design lab. There are also plans for a new media Arts Building that will feature classrooms with unique equipment, but there are no updates since it is placed on hold for now.
Interim President Ara Aguiar holds weekly meetings with the bond team to review arts and music-building updates.
Aguiar said equipment is delayed, and the school needs to buy more electrical units for specific areas for repair since they are too old. This is a problem since the committee had yet to learn that repairs were needed.
It adds to how certain classes are being pushed into the bungalows since instruments are too big in regular classrooms.
“We have delays because of equipment. We need to buy electrical units for the area to repair because many of them are very old,” Aguilar said.
Photography professor Sean McDonald said that the new media arts building needed help finding funding before the pandemic started. Pierce has been planning on building it, but price increases have delayed progress.
“It’s our second version of the building that we’ve been planning since 2009,” McDonald said. “Since prices have increased so much since they started planning the media arts building, they can’t build anything yet.”
McDonald said that inevitable funding failures made things for the new Media Arts building go nowhere, and it has caused the teachers to be frustrated. It’s still up in the air when the new Media Building will officially open.
“Lots of hours that everyone dedicated to putting into that project, and we just didn’t go anywhere with it,” McDonald said. “Now we can see similar problems with this, so it’s frustrating.”
Art department chair Melody Cooper has hopes for the new Academic West building opening in 2025. She hopes the new building will allow students to get together and appreciate art in a new way. The art department hopes that students can enjoy art in a new way and take different classes once it opens.
“The hope is it will become a very vibrant center where students can congregate, look at art, go to the Roundup.” Cooper said. “It offers many educational opportunities for students with the various disciplines, or events going on will help inspire students to take other classes.”
For now, the music department holds classes in other locations due to insufficient space to put instruments. The new Academic West building will have more classrooms and will accommodate more instruments and house more students.
“They are having some classes in the bungalows. They have some classes in the Great Hall because the choir needs more space. It’s the only place for large instruments, and they need the large space,” Aguiar said.