It’s been a little over a year since Vice President for Finance and Administration Lindsay Desrochers swung a sledge hammer into the side of the Portland Center for Advanced Technology, signifying its demolition. Now in its place, across from the PSU Bookstore, stands the iron and concrete skeleton of the new Academic and Student Recreation Center, structurally complete after receiving its final beam on Thursday.
“This builds on the vitality of the community we’re developing here. It will be, for a little while, the center piece of the campus,” Provost Roy Koch said. “It opens up a new chapter for PSU.”
Desrochers led the ceremony on Thursday, Sept. 25 to signify the important moment in PSU history and what this building will mean to the university. Before being hoisted up and put into place, the final beam in the center’s construction was signed by those attending the event.
The beam lay underneath a construction crane, ready to be lifted at the appropriate moment, with an American flag perched at one end. Students, faculty and public leaders watched together as the beam was signed one by one. Then each head arched upward, all watching as the beam was raised and put into place atop the new recreation center.
“To me this project represents more than just a collaboration with the city and the state,” ASPSU President Hannah Fisher said. “It really exemplifies a collaboration with the students and the administrators. These relationships are part of what makes Portland State the institution it is today. We are all here for the same cause, higher education.”
Also speaking at the signing was PSU President Wim Wiewel, Fisher, Campus Rec Director Alex Accetta, City Auditor Gary Blackmer and Portland City Commissioner Randy Leonard, all thanking the many contributors to the center, such as its contractor, Skanska.
“I’m proud of the fact that the students were the ones that instigated this,” Derochers said. “The students themselves said that this is an important value for us to have, education and health mixed together.”
The signatures on the beam will most likely not be readily viewed in the future as it fades into the building’s composition. The site is still under construction, but will be showing signs of the next stages of adding the interior and exterior over the next year.
According to Desrochers, the multi-use building will be largely finished in the fall of 2009 with retail, class and recreation spaces. Over the following winter, the building will slowly fill up with tenants to use the spaces.
The center will also house a roughly 150-spot bike hub in conjunction with PSU’s Bike Co-Op. The hub’s location will give cyclists access to the lockers and showers the rec center will provide.
“Buildings having mixed-use is still a relatively new thing,” Wiewel said. “It’s really only been the last 10 years that people have seen that we shouldn’t just be building an office building, let’s build a building that has retail on the ground floor, and then office space and in this case, a recreational space. That means you get 24/7 vitality.”
Also to be included on the fifth floor of the building will be the new home of the City of Portland’s archives. The archives, available to the public and soon to be easily accessible to PSU students, will offer an immense wealth of information about the city of Portland and its surrounding area.
At the moment, the archives are located in St. Johns, or as commissioner Leonard puts it, “they are located in what seems like another time zone.” The commissioner further commented as he pointed up at the unfinished structure, “This will be the best example of city archives in this country.”