Since its establishment in 2015, UTRGV has aimed at expanding its campuses and teaching sites across the Rio Grande Valley to serve the needs of its community, including two new buildings opening in Fall 2018.
The new Science Building on the Edinburg campus and the Music, Science and Learning Center (BMSLC) on the Brownsville campus are scheduled to be completed by the end of March and available for use in the next school year.
After construction is completed, Marta Salinas-Hovar, the associate vice president for Facilities Planning and Operations, said the next phase will involve moving in furniture.
“We’ll start seeing the delivery of the furniture and the installation take place right after they achieve substantial completion,” Salinas-Hovar said. “That’ll take about 30 days. … We will be planning to move people into the building in the very early summer.”
New Science Building
The new four-story structure is located adjacent to the existing Science Building on the Edinburg campus and will provide additional research labs for students.
“One of the neat features on this building will be that on the first floor, we’ll have a very large instrumentation core that will support all of the research labs,” Salinas-Hovar said. “So, researchers can go down to the core lab area and it will have special instruments that everybody can use, so it’ll be a shared space for the researchers.”
Some of its other spaces include classrooms, teaching labs, and faculty and researcher offices.
The new Science Building will have group study rooms, collaboration spaces and huddle rooms.
“It will also have a wing that will be more for teaching,” she said. “So, one of the smaller wings will be for teaching labs. We’re going to have a couple of regular classrooms and then we’ll have, I think it’s four teaching labs, just general science teaching labs.”
At a cost of $70 million, the construction of the facility is funded by the Permanent University Fund (PUF). The PUF is a public endowment contributing to the support of eligible institutions of the University of Texas System and the Texas A&M University System, according to the UT System website.
Salinas-Hovar told The Rider the furniture and installation will cost about $1.8 million of the $70 million.
The Rider toured the site in late January with Richard Shinsky, a UT System resident construction manager. Shinsky told the newspaper work crews from Vaughn Construction range between 270 to 300 people per day.
During the tour, he said there will be a courtyard between the space connecting the old and new buildings that will be designed to be “Saturn.”
A blue brick wall on the side of the new building, which will serve as a sun shade, and some areas on the ceiling will have “stars” painted on them.
The classrooms and teaching labs will be supported with audiovisual and IT technologies for long-distance and enhanced learning.
Music, Science and Learning Center
The $54 million building is located on the right side of the circular drive in front of the Main Building on the Brownsville campus.
Its cost is also being financed through the PUF, Salinas-Hovar said. The furniture and installation cost for the three-story facility is $2.1 million.
“This new building for the MSLC is going to be, I think, great because it’s going to be offering large rehearsal rooms, similar to what we have at the music complex in Edinburg, and will also have a multipurpose space that can be used as a recital hall, but it can also be used for regular lectures or it can be used for receptions or other special events,” she said.
The new building in Brownsville will support general academics, music instruction and recitals, and science teaching labs.
Albert Monrroy/The Rider
Like the new Science Building in Edinburg, the facility will have group study rooms, collaboration spaces, huddle rooms and will be equipped with AV and IT technologies for distance and enhanced learning.
Additionally, the new facility will also have chemistry and environmental science labs on the third floor.
Salinas-Hovar said the music wing of the BMSLC will also have small rooms that can serve as private rehearsal areas or practice spaces.
“Students, oftentimes, that are taking music need a place to rehearse or to practice on their own,” she said. “So, the small, soundproof practice rooms are what they need. There’s also some rooms that are a little bit larger that are for ensembles, which could be anywhere from two people to maybe a group of six people or eight people.”
The building will have two wings arranged to create a courtyard. The wings are connected on the western side by a welcoming three-level exterior arcade clad with a brick colonnade and roof to provide protective shading.
Earlier this month, The Rider toured the site with Mateo “Matt” Maldonado, who is a construction inspector for the UT System Office of Facilities Planning and Construction.
Maldonado told The Rider between 150 and 200 Bartlett Cocke General Contractors employees have worked hard every day to complete the construction of the BMSLC.
Linbeck Group LLC employees work on the Brownsville Interdisciplinary Academic Building Feb. 1. The building is scheduled to be completed by January 2019. Albert Monrroy/The Rider
Other projects
Aside from the buildings opening in Fall 2018, UTRGV is also expanding its main campuses with two more projects: the Brownsville Interdisciplinary Academic Building (BINAB) and the Edinburg Interdisciplinary Engineering and Academics Studies Building (IEASB).
The BINAB is being built on the existing parking lot directly across from the Main Building. Its cost is estimated at $36 million and is being financed by tuition revenue bonds.
Tuition revenue bonds are bonds that are repaid by the state. The facility will provide instructional space for multiple areas of study, with a focus on physics, and will be completed in January 2019.
It will house four physics teaching labs, 11 45-seat classrooms, two multi-use classrooms, six 30-seat general classrooms, one computer teaching lab, offices and support spaces.
Linbeck Group LLC is the company building the BINAB.
The facility will consist of a pair of two-story wings arranged to create a courtyard, which will serve as a gathering area, study space and can be used for events. The two wings will connect with an exterior bridge.
The IEASB, located west of the University Library and north of the Student Union on the Edinburg campus, is also set for completion in January 2019.
It will provide classrooms and computer labs primarily for STEM students.
The building will cost $35 million, $5 million coming from the PUF and $30 million from tuition revenue bonds.
Some of its features include six engineering teaching labs, two discipline-specific computer labs, eight 60-seat general classrooms, offices and support spaces.
The new facility will be one three-story building, which is being built by Vaughn Construction.
Brownsville: East Parking Lot
The ongoing construction of the BINAB resulted in a loss of parking space for campus community members in Brownsville.
To compensate for the displacement of 288 parking spaces, Lot B4 was built across the street from the Casa Bella student housing complex on the corner of FJRM Avenue and Tyler Street.
The new lot contains 295 parking spaces.
“There’s a bus stop, a bus shelter, right there that is adjacent to the fairly new parking lot,” Salinas-Hovar said. “We’d like to let students know that the parking lot is open, it’s available. We’d like to see students use it. It really isn’t very far from the campus, as far as walking distance, and, hopefully, soon enough, we’ll be able to see students parking there.”
She said the university believes the new parking lot is a good addition to the overall master plan for the Brownsville campus.
Salinas-Hovar said she and the university look forward to all the construction projects being completed to provide more resources for students.
“I’m looking forward to completing these two new buildings in Edinburg and Brownsville soon,” she said. “They’ll both be finished this spring. I’m getting excited about getting the furniture in there. … The two other projects should be finished, hopefully, by the end of this year. We anticipate being able to have them open for the spring semester in 2019.”
