Construction on New STEM Facility at UW-Marshfield-Wood County will Begin Next Month
Friday, June 17th, 2016 -- 9:33 AM
(Mike Kobs, WDLB) -Construction of the latest addition to the U-W Marshfield-Wood County campus will commence next month.That's what the design and architect engineers told the Marshfield Common Council this week. The city and Wood County are pooling their money with private donations to build a new science, technology, engineering and math, or "STEM", facility. Michael Hacker from the architectural firm of Bray Associates of Sheboygan said the new "STEM" building will also serve as the new front door to the campus.
"It's not as intuitive to know where the front door is to campus. It's different depending on who you are and why you're there. You're kinda dependent on signage to find your way where you're going. We hope that this design really makes it very up front, very natural, very intuitive to know what the front door is."
Hacker said the major frontage of the new building will be made of glass, and face 5th Street to the north.
"Frankly by design, this building faces north, so we don't have really any direct sunlight and that was one of the reasons we thought this concept worked really well with that amount of glass because we are hoping to take some of that very ambient light and spill it into the building and make those corridors very bright and borrow that light into the classrooms."
Miron Construction is serving as the manager for the project, and Project Manager Sherry Wall said bids for the work were going out on Wednesday and are due by July 8th. She also told Marshfield aldermen Tuesday night that a ground-breaking ceremony to kick off the project will be held on July 28th.
The initial project plan totaled eight-million dollars, and six-million of that was supposed to be covered by private donations. But that effort has brought in just over three-and-a-half million dollars, which will be pooled with one-million dollars from the city of Marshfield, and one-million from Wood County. Meanwhile, fundraising efforts continue. And it was just announced this week that the project received another major donation.
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