New community college taking shape

By Mary Shapiro

While the official opening is still eight months away, construction of the phase one building of St. Louis Community College's new Wildwood campus is 75 percent complete.

The Wildwood campus's new address is 2645 Generations Drive, behind the Wildwood Family YMCA off Highway 109 near Manchester Road.

Construction of the fourth SLCC campus -- the first such undertaking by the college since 1962 -- has been under way for a little more than a year.

The campus will be constructed in three stages, officials have said. The first Phase - a 73,000-square-foot, $19 million facility on about 66 acres, will include features such as high-tech classrooms and labs; offices; student services; a bookstore; multipurpose room; rooms equipped to send and receive instruction by interactive television; high-speed access by cable; and wireless connectivity within and around the campus site.

Dennis Dill, manager of maintenance and engineering for the St. Louis Community College District, said, "Timewise, this project is right on target. It should be about April or May until the building is entirely finished."

Pat Matreci, SLCC media relations coordinator, said the first classes -- of about 2,000 students -- attending the campus will arrive in August.

College officials have said explosive population growth in the West County area and steadily increasing enrollment at the college's education center at the Barn at Lucerne in Ballwin -- where the SLCC lease expires in August -- indicated to college officials the need for a full-service campus in the far West County area.

Initially, the Wildwood campus will offer associate of arts degrees in general transfer studies and business administration, as well as continuing education courses, officials said.

Matreci said construction partners in this project include William B. Ittner Inc., architect; William Tao and Associates Inc., engineer; KWAME Building Group Inc., project manager; and L.A. Schaefer Construction Inc., contractor.

In an effort to reduce each building's impact on the environment and the community, the Wildwood campus incorporates design concepts that qualify its facilities for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)

certification, Matreci said.

LEED is the voluntary national rating system standard for the design, construction and maintenance of so-called "sustainable" buildings, designed to accelerate the development and implementation of "green" building practices.

Matreci said LEED work at the site is deferring 97.5 percent of construction waste.

Dill said, "L.A. Schaefer has done a tremendous job of diverting waste from landfills. There are (trash bins) on site to recycle wood, plastic, metals, paper, drywall scraps and more.

"Also, LEED sets high minimum standards in areas such as energy efficiency. And at the Wildwood campus, we'll exceed that standard by 31 percent through use of features such as higher-efficiency boilers, chillers and air-delivery systems, in addition to making the most of available daylight through lighting controls.

"For instance, if there's a lot of light coming into a classroom,

lights will turn themselves off or dim way down. Also, rainwater that falls on the roof will be collected and stored and used for irrigation purposes. We can store up to 80,000 gallons."

Also, half of the roof will be a "green" roof, with plantings to insulate the building and make it cooler in the summer, Dill said.

"Green roofs reflect a lot of heat back into the atmosphere," Dill said. "And another part of the roof, not to be planted, has a white surface to also reflect sunlight.

"Recycled content of materials in this building are dramatically

higher than you'd expect. For instance, the content of steel in the structure is about 75 to 80 percent recycled steel. And, outside, we'll also have a prairie planted on part of the campus, to include all native Missouri species of plants, which can tolerate weather here and require little if any attention."

Matreci said the campus will have 26 full-time staff, including five full-time faculty "and we're in the hiring process now."

The faculty appointments include Timothy Roach, professor in English at the college's Forest Park campus who will serve as professor in English; M. Afzal K. Lodhi, professor in biology at Forest Park, who will serve in that same capacity at Wildwood; Robyn Barrett, an adjunct accounting instructor at Meramec who will serve as assistant professor in business administration;

Teri Graville, mathematics instructor at Southern Illinois

University-Edwardsville, who will serve as instructor II in mathematics; and Dorothy Welty-Rodriguez, psychology instructor at Heartland Community College in Normal, Ill., who will serve as instructor II in psychology.

Dill said future building phases are set to include a phase two and phase three. "Eventually there will be four to five buildings total on that 66 acres, but future phase construction will be driven by enrollment and available funding," he said.

You can contact Mary Shapiro at mshapiro@yourjournal.com.