Video by Ron Bend/CSU External Relations
The construction and design teams hard at work on CSU’s new Chemistry Research Building, along with the people who will soon occupy it, hit pause Friday afternoon to celebrate some project milestones.
Faculty, staff and students from the Department of Chemistry and the College of Natural Sciences finished the week with a celebratory lunch at the construction site of the new building, which is set to open roughly a year from now. The event, put on by Haselden, was a thank-you to Haselden Construction workers and other partners, including RLH Engineering and architects Hord Coplan Macht, for all their work thus far.
Attendees commemorated the event by adding their names to an interior wall of the building. Also on display was a fly-through video rendering of the new building.
“We in the college like to say that ‘discovery begins here,'” said College of Natural Sciences Dean Jan Nerger, who addressed the crowd and thanked the workers as well as the state of Colorado, which provided substantial funding for the project. “What we mean by that is here, in this building. The discovery that is going to take place in this building will be remarkable.”
Science Mall
In conjunction with the new Biology Building taking shape next door, for which a ceremonial topping out was held in May, Nerger said, “this is an exciting time for [the College of Natural Sciences], and CSU in general.” She referred to several construction projects happening all over campus. In fact, the chemistry ceremony rounded out a week of other milestone events: A halfway-point beam-raising for the new on-campus stadium, and also for the new Health and Medical Center.
Chuck Henry, chair of the Department of Chemistry, offered his thanks to Haselden and crew, and to everyone “working on this building every day.” He noted that some senior faculty members have been pursuing a new building for the last 30 years, and are excited to see their efforts come to fruition.
The new Chemistry Research Building will be approximately 61,000 square feet, most of it dedicated to synthetic chemistry research, and will feature flexible laboratory space to encourage collaboration among researchers and students. The building will make up the second half of the gateway to CSU’s Science Mall, alongside the 152,000-square-foot Biology Building.
