Building Higher Education

Throw in new or renovated student centers, parking ramps, and sports or recreational facilities on a smaller scale than stadiums. “All of that stuff” is exactly what’s being designed and built on campuses throughout the state.

Student Spaces

A good deal of research has found that the “residential life component” of a college—dormitories, student centers, health and recreational facilities—are very important in attracting and keeping students, says HGA’s Goblirsch. These kinds of spaces play a key role, for instance, “in determining whether freshmen will stay for their sophomore year.”

Hence the new or renovated residence halls recently completed or under construction at Bemidji State University and Southwest Minnesota State in Marshall. Southwest Minnesota also added a new football and soccer field this summer. A new residence hall at Minnesota State University-Mankato likewise will be joined by a new science center.

For private schools, there is the $36 million Student Commons facility for Bethel University in Arden Hills, scheduled to open next March. A student center planned for the St. Paul campus of the University of St. Thomas will include restaurants, a ballroom, an art gallery, a museum, and a bowling alley. The student center is the crown jewel of a $132 million project that also will create new athletic facilities, including a swimming pool and a basketball court.

A healthy portion of the funding for St. Thomas’ initiative came last year in the form of a $60 million gift—the largest single contribution ever to a Minnesota university—from trustee Lee Anderson, owner and chairman of APi Group, Inc., a St. Paul holding company of about 32 construction, manufacturing, and fire-protection businesses.

Classroom Spaces

Changes in technology and teaching methods push colleges to create different kinds of classrooms, either by renovating or building new. When it comes to laboratories and research facilities, changes in the equipment used often make renovation impractical.

“Even if you’re talking about a building only 25 years old, the mechanical systems and ceiling heights won’t allow certain labs to exist,” says Jeff Fenimore, who leads the higher education sector in the Midwest for the DLR Group, an architecture and engineering firm with offices in Minneapolis. Universities now are using instruments so precise and so sensitive to vibration and air quality that renovating an old building may not be feasible; they have to build from scratch. “You can’t have air blowing across your laser,” as Fenimore puts it.