Hudson County Community College Readies for New STEM Building

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Hudson County Community College (HCCC) recently held a topping out ceremony for its new Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) building, scheduled to open in August 2017. During the ceremony in Jersey City, the project team signed the building’s uppermost beam. Members of the team included Eric Chait and Michael Sidoti, both project managers with Little Falls, N.J.-based MAST Construction Services, the project’s construction manager.

Construction on the new $30 million STEM building broke ground in May 2015. When complete, the new facility will encompass 70,000 square feet across six floors. It will include computer, science, engineering, physics, electrical, biology, histology and chemistry labs as well as lecture halls and classrooms. Additionally, it will feature student lounges, offices and a coffee shop.

The STEM building is one of several new projects underway in Journal Square, and was preceded by the completion of a new 112,000-square-foot library in September 2014. The county, state and HCCC board of trustees collaborated to fund the $35 million library, which broke ground in November 2012, according to The Jersey Journal. The library includes 33 new classrooms, nine computer labs, three tiered lecture halls and 21 faculty offices. It also features a two-story lobby, a Starbucks coffee shop, gallery space, a 9/11 memorial and a rooftop terrace.

Both the STEM building and the library will help support the community college’s growing enrollment, which increased to 9,000 for-credit and 4,000 not-for credit students in the fall of 2014, reported The Jersey Journal.