As 200 construction workers clink and clank their tools against the newly poured concrete, a building starts to emerge near the intersection of Riverside Drive and River Street.
Construction for the new Visual Arts Building began in September 2013 and is set to be complete by the end of next month. Studio Arts will move into the building by the end of the academic year.
On a tour of the building, construction manager Mike Kearns said, that even though it doesn’t look like it, the building is almost finished.
“All of the concrete that you see is the finished product,” he said. “Most people will take a look at the fourth floor and think that we still have a ways to go yet, but all we really have to do is polish the concrete floors.”
Kearns also showed off some of the new facilities in the building including a virtual reality room, printing press facilities, ceramics facilities, sculpture facilities, open-air balcony classrooms, a recording studio, and a green roof.
The building will also have three public entrances, a loading dock, and a freight elevator.
RELATED: UI nixes museum project
The building will cost the University of Iowa roughly $77 million and will replace the 1936 Art Building, which was heavily damaged by the 2008 flood, said Wendy Moorehead, the UI Facilities Management strategic communications manager. The flood greatly damaged the Art Building even though water did not reach the first level of the building. It has been empty for the past nearly eight years.
“The building is being retained and will be repurposed in the future,” she said in an email.
UI art students are also looking forward to having a new building close to campus. The current Studio Arts Building is located two miles south of the main campus, along Highway 1. Only one Cambus route takes students all the way out to the building, which is mainly a shuttle between Studio Arts and Art Building West.
“The current Studio Arts Building is clearly a placeholder and nothing more,” said UI sophomore Collin Spratt. “It’s a mile and a half away from campus, and they make no attempt to mask the fact that it’s an old Menards building.”
Spratt noted scheduling classes in the Studio Arts Building is difficult, but the proximity of the Visual Arts Building and Art Building West may facilitate having back-to-back classes in separate buildings.
“The new Visual Arts Building is a huge need for all arts students,” he said.