Campus Develpoment Updates

The begining of the spring 2007 semester brought many changes to the CSULB campus. "We are trying to make more pleasant spaces for students to use," said Scott Charmack, vice president of Building and Facilities Management.

This semester we saw a new Starbucks in the University Library, two new Seattle's Best coffee shops in the dorms and a new and improved walkway by the Vivian Engineering building.

Up and Comming plans for the campus include a new science building, a new Libral Arts Building, more parking structures more student housing and more dining facilities on campus.

One item on the campus development to-do list is new parking structures. Charmack said there is room for three more structures but, because money to build new parking structures is not provided by the state, the funds would have to come from student fees."The beginning of the semester is peak parking time," Charmack said. "If we were to build to our peak, we would need a new parking structure, but throughout the rest of the semester, it's not as much of a problem."

According to Charmack, Lot 11 (north on Palo Verde by the other new parking structure), Lot 14 (between the Parkside Commons residence halls and the first parking structure) and Lot 7 (near the intersection of 7th Street and East Campus Drive) are all potential places for the new parking structures to accommodate the increasing campus population.

Students living on campus saw the effects of the university's plans for improvement with the opening of two new coffeehouses in the dorms last Monday, but Charmack said there are more plans on the way.

"These plans double the number of student housing available to roughly 4,000 and include new dining halls with space above it," Charmack said. "None of the plans include high-rise buildings."

Intro to my blog

This is my Blog! For one of my journalism classes this semester (J311) we all sign up for a beat - an area that we are responsible for reporting on - and post blogs weekly. In addition to this I am also writing for the on-campus newspaper, the Daily49er, and covering Campus Development. This is why most of my blogs will have a link in them to an article. What I write in my blogs is an elaboration of what was in print. It's tough to get EVERYTHING you hear in print, so this is all the "not-as-newsworthy" information that I got from my sources.