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Highlands Today

SFCC Lake Placid Center's $2.4-million upgrade complete

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By MARC VALERO

Highlands Today

Published: July 1, 2009

LAKE PLACID - With more parking outside and a fresh smell and new look inside, the renovated South Florida Community College Lake Placid Center offers a modernized learning center for students.

"It looks fantastic; what a difference," the center's Director Randy Paeplow said Tuesday. With new carpet and paint, it's really nice.

The building's musty smell is gone, he added.

"You're dealing with an old building and air-conditioning system that had been in there for 20 or 30 years," Paeplow said.

SFCC Vice President for Administrative Services Glenn Little said a centralized air-conditioning system was installed with one chiller, which will be much more efficient than the numerous smaller units that were replaced.

The campus has five buildings, but most of the work involved the main building (Building 100), which includes the office, testing area and many of the classrooms. Some work was done in Building 200 and Building 300.

An elevator was added to Building 100, which opened up accessibility for wheelchairs.

After connecting the campus to the town's sewer system, the septic tank's space was used to put in a parking lot with about 56 spaces.

"There have been a lot of challenges with parking so that helps us a lot," Little said.

Also, all the restrooms are now compliant with the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

One room was converted into a science lab so for the first time anatomy and physiology and biology courses will be offered at the center.

The anatomy and physiology class is already filled with 24 students and 14 were already signed up last week for biology, Little said.

Some extra work was done during the project that was not in the original plans.

The project came in under the estimated cost so the remaining money was used to re-tile the bathrooms and replace a section of the roof.

Along with safety and accessibility issues, the project also focused on efficiency to save on operating costs.

High efficiency bulbs or fluorescent tubes were installed in all the light fixtures, which now have automatic on/off switches that sense the presence of individuals.

The total cost of the project was about $2.4 million with most of the funding coming from state.

"We still have some more work down there to do and we will continue to do some more work," Little said.

The SFCC Lake Placid Center is located at 500 E. Interlake Blvd. in downtown Lake Placid.

Highlands Today reporter Marc Valero can be reached at 386-5826 or mvalero@highlandstoday.com

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