When Grand Valley State University's
Seidman College of Business opens its new $40 million facility in May 2013, many of its students will be immersed in trading stocks and bonds using real-time data in a new state-of-the-art trading simulation classroom.
Construction of the 127,000-square-foot structure that peeks over Grand Rapids' famed US-131 "S" Curve at Front St. NW is on track. Crews have shifted from structural and façade construction to the start of interior dry walling, installing ceilings and trims, and painting, says project manager Bob Brown, GVSU's assistant director for facilities planning.
"This building will give students the types of classrooms that will help facilitate learning in the way the work world is today," Brown says. "The trading room can simulate live trading of stocks and bonds. Nine computer stations with four flat screens each will be set up with
Bloomberg for live data on the market per an agreement with GVSU."
The building, which is on track for Silver LEED-NC certification, will offer a total of 15 classrooms, faculty offices, undergrad and graduate student services, faculty offices, and multipurpose meeting space. Several organizations will have offices on the main level, including the Center for Entrepreneurship, Family Business Alliance, the Van Andel Global Trade Center, and others.
The college razed a former A&P grocery warehouse to make room for the new building. Brown says the original structure was concrete, which was ground up and used in the new building's load transfer base.
"It allows us to use the existing soils as part of the foundation system," Brown says. "We put in eleven hundred
Controlled Modulus Columns, then the load transfer base about four feet thick was put in, and the building's foundation sits on that. It's used heavily out east and this might be one of the first buildings in the area [to use it]."
Source: Bob Brown, Grand Valley State University
Writer: Deborah Johnson Wood, Development News Editor
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