While the semester wraps up for students, facilities management will soon begin working on many projects that will continue throughout the summer.

The projects range from Calvary Chapel renovations to restoring Sigma Hall to a live video feed connection between Sutherland Hall and Calvary Chapel. Once completed in the fall, the projects will provide future benefits for students, according to senior director of facilities management Brian Phillips.

“SACRED SPACE”

Although fundraising for the Calvary Chapel renovations has not been completed, Phillips shared they have enough to do this summer’s work. As Calvary Chapel is closed, workers have begun demolition but also need to leave space for commencement ceremony readers. Once completed, the chapel will have new stained glass windows with LED interior lights, a wall to wall sculpture representation of Jesus coming out of the tomb, a sculpted cross on the main door, furnished floors and an extended stage, according to Phillips.

“I think it’s just going to be a beautiful space. It’s going to transform that space into I think a place that just encourages worship,” Phillips said. “Calvary Chapel has been very much a multi-use facility and I think this is going to move it in the direction of being more of a chapel, sacred space than it’s been.”

WORK CONTINUES AROUND CAMPUS

The work in Sigma Hall also involves restoration, making the science office space on the first floor serve as housing again, this time opening it up for graduate students, according to Phillips. Facilities management and auxiliary services are working together to prepare the space for graduate students to move in this summer, including by making two rooms into a kitchen lounge.

“We think it’ll create a neat grad community here on our campus. It’s been a long time since we’ve housed grad students on campus proper,” Phillips said.

While renovation projects inside buildings abound, facilities will also work underground to create a permanent fiber connection between Sutherland and Calvary Chapel. The project will allow facilities to stop putting video and audio lines above ground between the venues as well as better prepare the two spaces for if Sutherland becomes a more used chapel location, according to Phillips.

“We have a long-term plan to get fiber runs to all the major assembly spaces on campus that would give us maximum flexibility to do overflow in, for any event and connect two major assembly spaces together,” Phillips said. “And it’s strategic in that we think that it will might be useful for chapel if they choose to be in Sutherland to have overflow in a newly renovated Calvary Chapel.”