College Instruction Center construction making steady progress
Published 2:21 pm Thursday, July 28, 2016
BREMERTON — While construction of the new Olympic College College Instruction Center continues to go vertical with work on the walls of the theater, Korsmo Construction is making progress at ground level with the Broadway Avenue extension.
Over July 21-22, crews paved the new Broadway Avenue, which now crosses OC’s G-4 parking lot from 16th Street north to 18th Street. On July 25-26, the new road was striped and then opened to local traffic only, for residents accessing 16th Street and Chester Avenue.
Parking in this lot will remain closed to students until the start of fall quarter on Sept. 19.
The center will be a 70,000-square-foot facility for the art, music, theater, physical therapy and some nursing programs, as well as some simulation labs for nursing and high-tech, active-learning classrooms on the Bremerton OC campus. Budgeted at $46.5 million, it is the largest-funded project in state community and technical college history. It will also include a 276-seat theater to provide a venue for campus and community events like the Olympic Jazz Festival and youth symphony programs.
A groundbreaking ceremony was held Dec. 17 at the Bremerton campus.
“It’s all about community,” said Walter Schacht, principal owner of the architectural firm partnered with OC on this project, Schacht Aslani Architects, at the ceremony. “This building, as Dr. Mitchell says, has the arts in it, and the arts bring people together. The building also has health occupations in it, and those … programs serve the need of Kitsap and Mason counties’ growing populations.”
The estimated timeline of the CIC project includes completion of the Broadway extension in September 2016; demolishing the existing Bremerton OC theater and paving the area to add parking in July 2017; and having the CIC completed and open for occupancy in August 2017. More parking lots are planned to be complete in December 2017, as well.
This site work has resulted in the temporary elimination of visitor parking along 16th Street. Visitors may use any parking space with the exception of ADA, carpool and childcare spaces. Visitors must get a parking pass from the Campus Safety Office in the Humanities and Student Services Building (HSS).
Beginning Aug. 9, the F-3 and F-4 parking lots will be closed to facilitate underground piping utility work. This lot will remain closed until early September.
Summer is open parking season at the Bremerton campus, which means students, faculty and staff can park in any lot with a valid Olympic College placard. We strongly advise avoiding the construction area and instead park in G-1, G-2, G-3 and G-8.
The sidewalks along Chester Avenue and 16th Street will be closed from July 26 until mid-September. Please use an alternate route during this time.
“Construction crews and OC Facilities staff are working incredibly hard within a tight space to keep this project moving while limiting the impact to the College and our neighbors,” a project press release states. “We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work to complete the largest new facility project in state community and technical college history.”
