Construction on a new, state-of-the-art University of Colorado building blasted off Thursday — a building CU officials are calling not only an asset to the Boulder campus’s engineering department, but a hub for the entire state’s aerospace sector.
“This department has, frankly, served as that hub for a while, but our facilities haven’t been able to have as much collaboration as I think they could,” CU Engineering Dean Bobby Braun said. “Once we create this building for the whole community, we’re creating a center of gravity for the Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences.”
The new four-story, 140,000-square-foot building, slated for completion by the summer of 2019 with classes kicking off that fall, will be built on CU’s East Campus, within walking distance of space-programming hot spots like the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics’ Space Science Building.
The $82.5 million facility will house cutting-edge features: areas to flight-test drones and ground robots, a control room, futuristic laboratories with brand new equipment and plenty of room for collaboration. Funding for the construction was approved by the CU Board of Regents as part of a $300 million package of construction and renovation projects.
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