A glimpse inside MCC's new downtown campus

Work is moving along on schedule for a new downtown campus for Monroe Community College, which should be ready to open in the fall of 2017, county and college officials said Tuesday.

County Executive Maggie Brooks, MCC President Anne M. Kress and construction firms offered an update and showed draft designs for the $72 million project, which includes $36 million from the county.

The project is supposed to turn about half of a 500,000-square-foot complex of five buildings at Eastman Kodak Co.'s corporate headquarters at 321 State St. into a state-of-the-art campus. It will replace MCC's existing Damon City Campus in leased space at the Sibley Building on East Main Street.

"Of all the things that I've done as county executive, I think this is one of the projects that I am most proud of, because this represents to me an adaptive reuse of an iconic space," Brooks said.

Brooks said Tuesday that the county and MCC recently secured another $6 million for the project — a combination of money from the state and the nonprofit MCC Association.

While $1.6 million of that sum is earmarked for building a green roof at the campus — a state economic development award announced late last year — no decisions have been made on how to use the rest of the funding, Kress said. It is above and beyond the $72 million budget for the project.

The first phase of the work began in December and includes removing asbestos and gutting much of the existing interior of the building. That work is about 70 percent complete, said John DiMarco II, president and chief operating officer of DiMarco Constructors, which is managing construction.

The county announced a project labor agreement last month for work on the campus, which is being designed by LaBella Associates with input from faculty and students. Work to build classrooms, labs and offices should go out to bid in late spring or early summer and begin this fall, DiMarco said.

Officials showed renderings of an open central staircase connecting the first three floors of the seven-story building. Officials said classrooms will be flexible, able to be used for different purposes, and equipped with audio, visual and data technology.

The campus also would include public areas on the first floor.

Since the campus is expected to take up only about half of the available space, there may be opportunities for future expansion, or to offer space to companies interested in the state's START-UP NY program, Kress said.

The facility will house academic programs that are now at the Damon campus, ranging from criminal justice to education, as well as offices for MCC's Corporate College and workforce development programs, Kress said.

"I think you can see that working within our budget, we can deliver something truly inspiring," she said.

DRILEY@DemocratandChronicle.com

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