“Visual Center for a Visual World” Will Serve as Gateway to Burlington, Vermont Campus

BURLINGTON, Vt. -- Champlain College will celebrate the beginning of a new era of creativity and the arts on Saturday, Sept. 26 with the official opening of the College’s new Center for Communication and Creative Media (CCM) at 375 Maple St. The new facility will be open to the public for tours from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. during Family Weekend. An evening reception for alumni and other invited guests will be held from 5 to 8 p.m.

“This is the gateway to the campus,” said President Donald J. Laackman, “and will provide collaborate space for students, faculty and others to gather in and out of the classroom.”

The four-story, 42,000 square foot addition to the existing Hauke Center and Alumni Auditorium will serve as the formal entrance to campus and the academic home of the Division of Communication and Creative Media. The CCM building provides faculty offices and classrooms, video game and graphic design labs, studio spaces, a sound filmmaking and broadcast media production stage, art gallery and a collaborative media hub.

“We have built ourselves a world-class academic building,” said Dr. Paula Willoquet-Maricondi, dean of Division of Communication and Creative Media. “The building’s visually engaging and dramatic architecture will foster creativity, its dynamic and boldly colored interior and furnishing will ignite the imagination and the overall design of the academic and non-academic spaces will enhance the flow of collaboration not only for the CCM Division, but for the entire campus and the local community.”

“The design and layout of the classrooms, labs, and studios, and even of  the hallways and lounge areas, speaks to and supports everything that Champlain stands for: creativity, innovation, collaboration, integration, synergy, convergence, and interdisciplinarity,” she added. “this is truly a visual building for a visual culture.”

The CCM building is also the transit center for the college’s shuttle, home to the expanded Campus Store, offers new dining options and will serve as a premier special events and conference center for special events, meetings and conferences throughout the year.

The $24.5 million project broke ground March 2014 to update the existing Hauke Center and Alumni Auditorium as  part of the College's master plan to provide each of the academic divisions with its own home building. Completed in August, this expanded and renovated structure has a combined gross floor area of approximately 75,000 square feet.

To retain architectural consistency, Champlain asked architect Colin Lindberg, who designed the Hauke Family Center and Alumni Auditorium in 1989, to design the CCM building. His work over the past 25 years on numerous buildings on campus will be highlighted at the evening reception on Sept. 26.  H. P. Cummings served as the construction manager for project.

“There is a purposeful connection in the proximity of students and faculty to create excitement and collaboration in this building,” noted Provost and Chief Academic Officer Laurie Quinn.

In addition to being home to the largest academic division at Champlain, the building contains several other strategic initiatives that will benefit the campus at large, including:

• Transit Center. This is the primary transit portal for the campus, providing the College shuttle bus access between the main campus and its remote parking facility located at the Miller Center at Lakeside Campus at 175 Lakeside Ave. The main level of the building contains food and beverage services and a lounge area.

• Campus Store. The ground floor level is home to the Campus Store for textbooks,  sundries and College-branded merchandise and clothing.

• “Eats” The College created a second dining facility within the CCM building to accommodate additional demand generated by the increased undergraduate residential population (275 new on-campus dormitory beds). Zime Bistro, offering coffee and light fare; The Grille for burgers and sandwiches; Auntie Anne’s Pretzels and Chloe’s Fresh Fruit Smoothies. The College received a $2 million gift from Sodexo to support the CCM project. Sodexo is the contracted supplier of food for the campus cafeteria and catering.

• The Gallery. The third floor art gallery is available for student, faculty and visiting artists work and will be curated throughout the academic year by Curator-in-Residence Chris Thompson.

• The Champlain Room.  The CCM building offers a large conference room space (capacity: 300 persons +/-) able to accommodate a variety of academic and social functions;  adjacent to it is an outdoor terrace and views of Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks.

• Alumni Auditorium Upgrades. The Alumni Auditorium, a 200-seat theater/lecture hall, has been updated with new seating, state-of-the art lighting, HVAC and audio-visual systems.

• Hauke Center Upgrades. Classrooms and studio spaces were upgraded, along with new, more efficient HVAC system, thermal envelope and finishes.

• Energy Efficiency. Consistent with its mission to embrace sustainable technologies in the design, construction and operation of its campus facilities, Champlain expanded its use of geothermal energy to heat and cool the CCM building. The project includes an extension of its geothermal infrastructure (well-head production and piping to accomplish this goal). Champlain College has set a green design goal for this project of achieving Three Globes under the Green Globes rating system. This third-party certification program is run by The Green Building Initiative. Positioned as an alternative to USGBC's LEED program, it uses a checklist approach, granting projects points for areas in which they exceed standard industry practice. The system is more broadly adopted within Canada where it originated, but is building a market presence in the United States. It is expected to be the first Green Globes project within Vermont. A rating of Three Globes is viewed as equivalent to a Gold target under the LEED system.

• Support for the Project: A recent gift from Robert and Christine Stiller through the Stiller Family Foundation has helped fund capital investments in the new Center for Communications and Creative Media, thus freeing up space in the S.D. Ireland Family Center for Global Business & Technology to house all Stiller School of Business faculty and programs.