The River Campus at Southeast Missouri State University will soon include an art complex to house ceramics, sculpture and painting students, further unifying the Holland College of Arts and Media to better meet accreditation recommendations.

The facility at 340 S. Frederick St., formerly Cape Restaurant Supply, will be renovated and is part of a lease-purchase agreement between the university and property owners Lisa and Scott Blank of Cape Girardeau.

According to Kathy Mangels, vice president for finance and administration, the renovation will be a phased project, the completion of which requires “significant fundraising.”

Approximately 25% of the total project cost will be funded by redirecting money currently tied up in the budget for the leasing of an art space at 835 Broadway, Mangels said. The University Foundation and River Campus leadership will work with its arts task force to generate private dollars to complete the project, according to Mangels.

Approved by the Board of Regents as part of the university’s Facilities Master Plan in December 2018, the expansion project will consolidate physical spaces of the Department of Arts and Design, a strategic initiative of the Holland College, and will help meet guidance from the accrediting body, the National Association of Schools of Art and Design.

As of last week, the total cost for the renovation for the art complex had not been confirmed, according to Ann Hayes, director of University Communications. The art complex is still in the planning phase, and Southeast officials and property owners are working with a firm specializing in planning, design, architecture and construction, according to a university news release.

Hayes said university officials are working on the schematic design phase of the art complex, meaning final numbers about the facility’s square footage and estimated cost could not be confirmed.

The River Campus opened in 2007, and since then, many art and design students have taken classes all over the campus. Upper-level painting students take classes on the main campus, while lower-level painting students have had class at the River Campus. The ceramics studio is currently housed in a leased space at 835 Broadway, according to the release.

Holland College dean Rhonda Weller-Stilson explained some arts and design faculty have been teaching classes across multiple floors at a time or must commute back and forth between the main and river campuses to teach students. The consolidation will allow faculty to be under one roof and the chance to interact more regularly.

While the expansion helps solidify the River Campus as a “gateway to the arts” in downtown Cape Girardeau, Weller-Stilson said it will also bring students together across experience levels, a change conducive to artist collaboration.

It will also help with the recruitment of future students, she said.

“This will be wonderful for our future students, current students, maybe, if they’re freshmen now,” Weller-Stilson said. “But for future students, it will make a huge difference in their lives and will open more possibilities for them to learn new techniques ... so it’s really all about the students first.”

For the fall semester, there were 948 students registered in majors within the Holland College, according to Southeast’s online fact book, which can be found online through Southeast’s Office of Institutional Research. Of the total, there are 305 students in the Department of Art and Design, 130 Department of Music students, 218 in the Department of Theatre and Dance and another 287 in the Department of Mass Media.

The art complex will provide space for ceramics, as well as sculptures using various materials such as woodworking, metals, 3D materials and mixed media, according to a university news release. The facility will also house a “clean” classroom with 3D printers and technology available for student galleries or viewing mock-ups and model work.

Weller-Stilson said the complex will feature an outdoor patio space where students can work on projects too large for indoor creation. Student artists may even use the outdoor space for art showings or to learn how to build large, outdoor kilns.

Students in the Department of Mass Media — the only department within the Holland College not represented at the River Campus — take classes in the newly renovated Grauel Building and the Rust Center for Media at 325 Broadway in Cape Girardeau. There are no foreseeable plans to move mass media students to the River Campus, according to Weller-Stilson.

Asked whether the art complex completed the River Campus in terms of future expansion, Weller-Stilson was quick to say, “No.”

“Because we do have needs in interior design, photography [and] commercial multimedia,” Weller-Stilson said of Holland College programs, “there are no plans for those at this time, but just because we get this new art building, that doesn’t solve all of our issues.”

Eventually, she said, the programs now hosted at the River Campus will likely face space needs due to growth.

“We’re full, which is great,” Weller-Stilson said, noting the Department of Theatre and Dance recently added classes for aerial dance and hip hop. “As we keep growing, there’ll be new needs.”

Several university buildings in need of renovations are closed and in need of renovation, including academic and residence halls, creating a need for more space among departments. Consolidation of the River Campus will help to free up space on the main campus for use by other academic programs.

Weller-Stilson said the project has been an identified goal of the college for “a long time,” and a priority of its Arts Task Force for three or four years.

Previous fundraisers have been held for River Campus expansion, such as the Artrageous events held in April and once before in April 2017, at Erlbacher Gear and Machine Works in Cape Girardeau. The money, Weller-Stilson said, has long been set aside for this project.

“We’ve had some people who have just donated to us,” Weller-Stilson said about Artrageous. “[The money raised has been] sitting in a pot at the [University] Foundation.”

Renovation on the art complex could begin this spring, and the first phase is projected to be open by the fall of 2021. For more information, contact Weller-Stilson at the Holland College of Arts and Media at (573) 651-2210.