A section of the R2 parking lot southwest of LaFollette Complex is now a construction staging area for the university's new Communication Media Building.
The $21 million building, which is slated to open in 2007, will adjoin the Robert P. Bell and Ball Communication buildings. Contractors from W.A. Sheets and Sons of Fort Wayne closed off the restricted parking lot last week to begin preconstruction. However, enough space should be available in the rest of the R2 lot to accommodate students and faculty, Nancy Wray, parking services office manager, said.
"We are monitoring it on a daily basis to make sure there are spaces available during the peak time," Wray said.
Contractors will also close off the area between the Robert Bell and Ball buildings during Spring Break. Students can still walk along McKinley Avenue or on the Cow Path, said Greg Graham, assistant director of facilities planning and project manager.
The nearly 90,000-square-foot facility will bring the four units of the College of Communication, Information and Media under one roof, Michael Holmes, interim dean of CCIM, said.
"It will be a tremendous addition," Holmes said. "It will take some time. We have to be patient as we wait for the new building, but it will be a tremendous asset to the university."
The three-story building will feature 14 telecommunications and communication studies classrooms on the first two floors. This will allow the communication studies department, now located in the Arts and Communication Building next to Emens Auditorium, to be in closer relationship with the other three departments, said Nancy Carlson, chairperson of the Department of Telecommunications and member of the planning committee.
The building will include two recording studios and five digital editing suites, as well as 47 faculty offices, two conference rooms and a 127-seat lecture hall. The state-of-the-art electronic classrooms and improved sound-recording facilities will boost the college's emerging digital media content program, Holmes said.
A small area on the first floor of the the new building will also serve as an incubator space for Ball State faculty to create interdisciplinary projects that could evolve into business entities. Students in the Student Technology Incubator Small Business Program, which is part of the Center for Media Design, can also use the space. Projects that begin in the area could mature to go through the Muncie Innovation Connector, a small business incubation facility on Marsh Street, Tom Kinghorn, vice president for business affairs, said.
"All of this is designed to drive innovation among students and faculty," Kinghorn said. "There's no limitation on the level of creativity that this would support."
The student-operated WCRD radio station will move from the first floor of the Ball Building to the second floor of the Communication Media Building, right off the main corridor that will run north to south in the facility. WCRD will not only receive more exposure but also will reach more students through its new transmitter and antenna, Carlson said.
"People will be able to see inside the windows of WCRD and be able to know more about the campus radio station than they ever have before," Carlson said. "Combine the new facility with the equipment we just put in to give us more power, and it really should be the voice of the Ball State student."
Indiana Public Radio will also move from the Ball Building to the first floor of the facility. J-Ideas, a program developed to help connect high school journalism students with professionals, will move from the Art and Journalism Building to a more spacious area in the Ball Building, Holmes said.
The Indiana General Assembly and the state budget committee approved the sale of bonds to finance the $21 million project in 2003. The formal groundbreaking ceremony will take place in early April, Holmes said.
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