NORMAL — Heartland Community College welding instruction will expand with a tripling of welding bays as part of remodeling this summer at the Workforce Development Center.
The Heartland board of trustees approved the remodeling project Tuesday with Core Construction for a total amount to not exceed $473,601. The project will expand the number of welding bays from 10 to 30.
"This project will be completed this summer and will more than double or triple the number of welding booths that we have in capacity," Heartland President Keith Cornille said. No start date has been set yet, but the work is expected to be finished this fall.
Noah Lamb, vice president of finance and administration at Heartland, said the project will be done through a job order contract. That means the college will work with a preapproved or prequalified contractor whose bid stays below a certain threshold, allowing the college to start faster than if it had to bid out the work.
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Trustees had approved the purchase of welding equipment in December.
The board on Tuesday also approved a water main extension allowing water flow for the new Agricultural Complex to loop instead of running into a dead end, said Steve Fast, assistant to the president and public information and communication director at Heartland. The water main loop connection had been requested by the Town of Normal.
Lamb said the project will start May 1, with an expected completion date in August.
Trustees approved the project, not to exceed a total cost of $355,163, and accepted a bid for $278,575 from Stark Excavating Inc. of Bloomington. This will include a 10% contingency fund, and the college is paying for the work through its public health and safety fund, which is not associated with funding for the Agricultural Complex itself.
Before Tuesday's meeting, a ribbon-cutting was held to officially rename Rooms 1406 and 1407 in the Community Commons Building as the Greg Chadwick Community Board Room. Chadwick, who died in 2020, served 18 years on the board of trustees, including 11 years as board chair.
He was named president of the Illinois Community College Board of Trustees in 2020 and was awarded the Ray Hartstein Trustee Achievement Award the same year.
The Greg Chadwick Community Board Room has also been remodeled, adding storage for information technology equipment, replacing the projectors with wall-mounted television screens, replacing the carpet and lighting fixtures, adding new sound panels, placing designated signage in the hallway, and repainting the walls with Heartland's signature hawk blue color. The total cost for the renovations was $482,000.
"Thank you all for coming in earlier, and for those in the audience who came up earlier tonight for the ribbon cutting, as we renovated the space here on campus and for the naming of the room in honor and memory of Greg Chadwick, who we all thought the world of," Cornille said.
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