SCENE THE
THE
Spring Issue 2
March 6, 2020
THESCENEFP.COM
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Former editor dies See page 8
St. Louis Community College at Forest Park
STLCC print shops merge
Main center is on Meramec campus By Mackenzie Gregory The Scene staff The four print shops of St. Louis Community College have been merged into one main print center on the Meramec campus. That means that Forest Park faculty and staff will no longer be able to make copies, business cards, posters, name badges and fliers on campus. They will order through a website, interoffice mail or bookstore dropoffs. “It’s hard to tell (how it will affect employees) since it hasn’t happened yet,” said Radiologic Technology Program Coordinator Rebecca Northern, whose department uses print-shop services often. The work is being outsourced to SumnerOne, a St. Louis printing and data services company. No STLCC employees will lose their jobs. Originally, print shops operated on each of the three main STLCC campuses and at the Cosand Center downtown. The STLCC Board of Trustees made the decision to merge in May of last year to increase efficiency and alleviate budget problems. The plan went into effect March 2. “Each location had one manager, one full-time employee and part-time employees working across all shops,” said Justin Rudick, senior manager of Auxiliary Services. “Equipment-wise, we had two large printers at each shop, more than two times the amount of equipment and employees we needed to run.” STLCC officials maintain that the new system is just as efficient as the old one. Orders will be fulfilled in 24 to 48 hours, according to an email announcement from the marketing and communications department. The print center also will accommodate employees who need copies and other printed materials on an emergency basis, Rudick said. “We will be able to deliver prints within 24 hours. We have contingencies. If it is an emergency, we can deliver same day.” The Forest Park print shop was in the basement of D Tower. When it closed March 2, it had only one employee, Roger Mayden, a supervisor in Auxiliary Services. He has been working nearly 20 years for the college. Mayden has transferred to the Meramec campus and is working for SumnerOne. He declined to comment for this story.
See Center page 7
Towers to be demolished soon
By Ethan Tutor The Scene staff
St. Louis Community College officials have been talking about tearing down the A and B towers at Forest Park for more than two years, and now the time has come. Demolition is slated for mid-March, according to Ken Kempfe, STLCC engineer and design manager. The job will be done by Ahrens Contracting, which also has been in charge of “abatement” (preparation), with oversight by NPN Environmental Engineering. Advance Environmental Services also has been working to safely remove hazardous materials. “We hardly ever do demolition jobs,” Kempfe said. “But we’ve got a very reliable and trustworthy company, and so far everything’s been pretty routine.” The four-story brick towers make up about half of the east wing of the main campus building. They’re being demolished to make way for greenspace and walkways around the new Center for Nursing and Health Sciences, a $39 million, four-story building that opened last fall. It houses college programs for nursing, dental hygiene, respiratory and other health sciences.
Towers are empty shells
Last week, Kempfe took a reporter, photographer and videographer from The Scene on a tour inside the A and B towers to show people what is being done during the abate-
Photo by Markell Tompkins
A periodical table of elements sign is one of the few educational items left amid debris in room A-110, a science lecture hall being prepared for demolition. See more photos on pages 4-5.
ment process. “We’re just a bit behind schedule,” he said. “The A Tower lecture hall was more difficult to strip than expected. The towers are independent of each other, meaning that they will be stable and no pipes or wires will be left ‘dangling’ when A and B tower are gone.” Today, buildings that once served as plac-
es of learning are empty shells. Furniture and equipment have been removed from lecture halls, classrooms and offices. Trash and debris fill hallways that students began walking through in the 1960s. Rooms without windows are dark, and cold winter air flows through the buildings, as all utilities have been cut off. Outside, a mound of cigarette boxes next to B Tower are remnants of smoke breaks taken by construction workers. Since November, they have been stripping the towers of hazardous materials, including asbestos, which is known to cause cancer. It can be found in roof shingles, pipes, siding, wallboard, floor tiles, joint compounds and adhesives. “We’ll have an environmental consultant file a report to be sure that no hazardous materials are released into the atmosphere,” Kempfe said. “We have many world-class onsite consultants working with us every day.”
Project has opposition
Photo by Markell Tompkins
Electioneering for Sanders Candice Murdock, 24, left, a volunteer for Bernie Sanders’ Democratic presidential campaign, takes information from general education student Chris Staton, 20, at a Sanders table outside D Tower. Missouri’s presidential primary will be held March 10; Illinois’ primary is set for March 17.
Not everyone is happy about the towers coming down. Architectural historian Kevin Harrington spoke out against demolition when STLCC announced its plans, and he hasn’t changed his mind. Harrington, a professor emeritus at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, is writing a book on midcentury modern architects Ben and Cynthia Weese. Ben Weese helped his brother, Harry Weese, design the Forest Park campus in the 1960s. They collaborated with renowned landscape architect Dan Kiley, who also designed the original Gateway Arch grounds. “(Demolition) doesn’t make sense to me,” Harrington said last week. “I thought it was a very fine building. Many taxpayer dollars were spent on the building. The creators did an incredible job with these towers. The architects respected the city and com-
See Demolition page 2