After one and a half years of construction, Santa Fe will open the doors of its campus expansion into downtown Gainesville by the end of the semester.
Construction of the 87,366 square-foot educational center is expected to be finished by the end of the Spring semester, and Santa Fe College plans to open the three-story building to students and faculty soon after, said Steve Doll, project manager with Parrish McCall Constructors LLC.
The Charles L. Blount Center previously served as the college’s outreach and educational facility in downtown Gainesville. The new $36.5 million dollar Blount Hall has the same location benefits but will expand its services by turning the center into a campus, offering everything a college student needs from their first day of classes until graduation, according to the college’s website.
Parish McCall Constructors is waiting on the last of the necessary audio and visual equipment to finalize classrooms in the educational center, he said. The delivery of these finishing touches has been delayed because of COVID-19-related supply issues.
“All of the classes are set up to where they can be broadcasted for online schooling,” Doll said.
The new facility is designed to be environmentally friendly and is on track to achieve the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council for sustainability and resource efficiency, he said.
LEED certification considers factors like the ratio of natural lighting to artificial lighting in the building, the reflectivity of the roof, the energy efficiency of the air conditioning system and the amount of waste that leaves the site, Doll said.
The facility in Gainesville will provide a state-of-the-art, eco-friendly learning environment for students and faculty. But its downtown presence will offer even more, SF spokesperson Jay Anderson said.
“This is really establishing in the heart of Gainesville a presence here that, again, will be a convenient location for people to get to,” Anderson said.
Students will be able to travel to their classes at the downtown campus with ease — something that was not always the case at SFC’s northwest campus.
“I’m most excited for just having somewhere more in the middle of Gainesville and having a place that I can go to study closer to where I live,” wrote Emma Meskunas, an 18-year-old SFC business student, in an email.
Blount Hall will also offer various student services including admissions, financial aid, academic advising and library spaces, Anderson said.
The building will roughly double the business incubation space previously at the Blount Center for SFC’s Center for Innovation and Economic Development (CIED). It will also serve as a convenient location for students to complete their degree and certificate programs in business and information technology and offer full associate’s degrees for students looking to transfer, Anderson said.
SFC’s Business Incubation Program supports start-up companies by equipping entrepreneurs with the tools they need to grow their business, according to the SFC website.
Terri Bailey launched her nonprofit Bailey Learning and Arts Collective — a community outreach and education organization — with the help of SFC’s CIED program.
“[CIED] gave me the space and the support needed to make those dreams become a reality,” Bailey said.
Her collective hosts film screenings, selfcare and activism workshops and arts events.
“With [Blount Hall] being located close to UF’s innovation hub and the innovation district, I hope that it will bring more traffic into the SFC CIED and that people will see it as not only a viable option but recognize it as the first stop on the entrepreneurial journey,” Bailey wrote.
Contact Lily Kino at lkino@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter @lily_kino.
Lily is a third-year journalism major with a concentration in environmental science covering criminal justice for The Alligator. Last semester, she served as the Santa Fe reporter. When she's not writing, you can find Lily on a nature walk, eating Domino's Pizza or spending time with her friends.
