Campus has been busy of late.
Machinery moving around has not gone unnoticed.
Taylor University has a multitude of construction projects underway, the biggest one being the Horne Academic Center.
The Horne Academic Center will be the home of film and media and entrepreneurship. The construction zone is underway in the area of land where the dome was.
The dome used to be a student center before the construction of the LaRita Boren Campus Center. It was to the north of Modele Metcalf Visual Arts Center and was deconstructed over the summer so Horne could be built.
The opening of this building should come in time for the fall semester of 2024 — a little more than 16 months from now, Ron Sutherland, special assistant to the president, said.
Other construction projects include the Stillman Fieldhouse, Hodson Dining Commons (DC) and Chick-Fil-A in the LaRita Boren Campus Center.
One of the larger renovations is happening in the DC.
“We’re actually talking about putting an addition on that side of the building so we can host 400 people in one room,” Sutherland said.
As an older building, the DC is in need of renovation in multiple areas.
An area of need is accessibility. Taylor is looking to put new elevators in amongst a number of other improvements.
“It has been a bad building for accessibility,” Sutherland said. “So we’re looking to remedy that, and we’ll redo some of the stairs and access points with that.”
The Stillman Fieldhouse has also been in the process of renovation. As the project is coming to a close, the goal is for the project to be completed by the time the football team returns in August.
Odle Gymnasium is another focus of campus improvement underway. Ceiling braces are being painted, insulation is being replaced and the basketball court will be redone.
A future project of renovation will be the Nussbaum Science Center, as Taylor has announced a new nursing major.
Future nursing majors will need laboratories to work in by their junior fall semester.
“Because students who come into the nursing program, knowing that we’re in progress of getting accreditation once approved, would need those labs in the fall of 2024,” Sutherland said.
Other future projects include many improvements to residence halls. Wengatz Hall will be one of the first to have renovations.
Wengatz will have its flooring redone and its lobby will also be renovated. Wengatz and Olson Hall are both going to be getting new windows this summer.
“Our hope is to start moving around to the residence halls and start picking them off one at a time,” Sutherland said.
Looking farther into the future, another project the university is exploring is Samuel Morris Hall’s heating unit.
The heating unit is outdated and the university is hoping to update the control systems to make it easier for maintenance.
Taylor has many projects and areas they are looking to improve. At this point in time, everything seems to be going as planned, Sutherland indicated.
The one possible issue is that there is currently a supply chain issue in particular computer chips. Computer chips are needed for a number of projects such as heating and cooling units.
“Since a lot of those (computer chips) are manufactured overseas, recall has been really high on a number of those parts,” Sutherland said. “It’s just taken a while to get some of those parts from overseas to be here and be ready to help us serve the things we’ve got.”
With the ongoing and future construction, Taylor’s campus will see a variety of improvements in the coming years.
