After their recent announcement that stage two of building construction was to commence in 2018, CSU Port Macquarie are also ticking off another milestone this week with work on the first section of student accommodation to be completed.
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The 250 bed facility, which includes kitchens, laundry facilities and living rooms on every floor, will be home to more than 50 students when the 2018 academic year kicks off, and executive director of the university’s Division of Facilities Management, Mr Stephen Butt said it is an exciting time ahead.
“We are about to begin stage two of a multistage development along with the near completion of stage one of the student residential accommodation which the uni has a long term lease over.
“Each room has an en suite, study nook, fridge, lots of storage for clothes and personal items, as well as individual air conditioners in each room and university connected WiFi in all the residential buildings.
“The connectivity of all the new buildings to each other will be a big factor that will be a running theme throughout the whole construction process.,” Mr Butt said.
The biggest issues facing the build is that due to student capacity limitations construction will be ongoing, with Mr Butt in Port Macquarie this week briefing council on the work.
“We regularly brief council on where we are at with the construction work to ensure they are aware of what we are doing and when.
“With the campus bringing four new courses [Bachelor of Occupational Therapy, Master of Customs Administration, Bachelor of Environmental Science and Management, and Bachelor of Applied Science (Parks, Recreation and Heritage)] on in 2018, construction needs to make room for the increases in demand from new incoming students.
“The buildings in stage two and three will fully cater to the expected increases in students which at full capacity should be up above 5000,” he said.
Head of Campus at CSU in Port Macquarie, Professor Heather Cavanagh, said both the university and Port Macquarie can expect great things moving forward.
“We hope early construction work will start on site by mid-2018 and construction will be completed by the end of 2019, for occupation by the start of 2020.
“When we opened the Port Macquarie campus we had 34 students, and over the five years we have been in town we expanded to more than 1000 students; and by the end of stage three we are expecting to see around 5,500 students on our campus,” Professor Cavanagh said.