New drawings–in color!

Our buds at Koch Hazard just sent over the new facility design concepts with exterior materials and colors. This is the ‘first draft’ proposal for the exterior. Let us know what you think in the comments!

Getting Closer

It’s been a  whirlwind summer for the Rural Learning Center facility design project. As you’ll see in the slideshow below (or by clicking here), the design of the new conference and training center is really coming along thanks to your input and ideas. We’ve held a couple more charrette-like design sessions in July and August–mostly with particular partners who will use the facility often and so need to get into the details. We’ve also begun to think about materials and colors for the outside of the building. We’ll show you the ideas as soon as we have them from Koch Hazard Architects.

We’ve also been busy pulling together a whole lot of partners and sponsors for the project. As you’ll see in the slideshow, this thing is going to cost $11.6 million to build, and we’ve secured just under $4 million so far. There’s a lot fo work left to do!

We’ll be inviting hte whole community and all the other partners and stakeholders in this project to a community gathering sometime in early October (watch this site and the local papers) to show you the details of the plan and get more input and ideas from you. This is your facility, after all.

Down to the Details

We wrapped up the fourth day of local community design workshops on June 30 with a public session at the Howard American Legion Hall. If you couldn’t make the meeting, please leave your comments or ideas here on this site–just click on ‘comments’ on the bottom of this post. You could also email us, call us at 605.772.5139, or stop in anytime.

It’s time to begin getting down into the details of the campus design now. Our hope is to complete the concept design stage by August, and move into major fund raising mode by September. We’re well on our way to raising the money needed to complete the project by our target date of July, 2010.

We’ll be sharing some notes with you soon from the conversations June 30. Until then, here’s the most up to date slide show of campus concept images and figures. The show also includes some background info and data about the transformation taking place right now in Miner County. Enjoy.

Final Design Studio June 30

Don’t miss another chance to see the latest designs, and give your input and feedback. Your ideas count!

On Monday, June 30^th from 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm Koch Hazard Architects, along with the Rural Learning Center, will host the final public feedback session related to the RLC campus. This is the last in a series of sessions that began April 1^st and continued April 29^th and 30^th. The previous sessions were focused on gathering ideas from the community about what the new campus should be and do. Architects and staff used the ideas gathered during the charrette to begin the design process, and will share the emerging design concepts with the community on the 30^th.

Everyone is invited to attend the session at the Howard Legion Hall Monday (6/30) at 4:00 pm. You can learn more about the charrette by calling MCCR at 772-5153.

To take a sneak peek at the latest design concepts, click here.

Sneak a Peek

The Rural Learning Center staff and board of directors just met with Koch Hazard Architects for a design update. Now you can sneak a peek at the very latest conceptual designs of the new campus. It’s been a long and winding road over the past three months of brainstorming and designing with local community members and other project stakeholders. The drawings below are the fourth evolving version so far, and it’s still a work in progress (just click on the arrows to move forward or backward in the presentation).

We’ll be hosting a community design session at 4pm at the Howard, SD American Legion Hall on Monday June 30. There, we’ll show off the newest designs and ideas, and get your input and feedback. Don’t miss it!

Round Two Rundown

Koch Hazard Architects and the Rural Learning Center/MCCR staff hosted two days of brainstorming, design and feedback on April 29 – 30 in Howard, SD. The workshop, called a “charrette,” included roundtable discussions and prioritization on campus elements, uses and needs, preliminary design concepts and space requirements, and public feedback. During a Town Hall meeting at Howard High School on April 29, local residents voted on over 100 different design element images, helping the architects discover local preferences and expectations.

Over 75 local people, along with project investors and stakeholders, design and construction professionals, and experts in important fields (like hotel management, hospitality, food service, sound, technology and conferencing) took part in the workshops.

Now the architect team will work to produce more detailed design concepts based on input and ideas from charrette attendees. These designs will be further refined at a final design workshop on June 30, 2008.

To see more pictures, click here.

A Peek Inside the Community Design Workshop

We’ll be putting together a “Learning Summary” for last week’s two-day RLC Campus Design Workshop, and posting here for you. In the mean time, you can take a look at the pictures! Just click here or on the picture below…

You Can Help Design the New Rural Learning Center Campus

Miner County Community Revitalization (MCCR) has been making plans to build a conference and training center, hotel and community kitchen on Main Street in Howard. Next week you can help decide what the Rural Learning Center campus might look like and how it might be used. A two-day design session (called a “charrette”) will be held on Tuesday, April 29 and Wednesday April 30, 2008. The purpose of the charrette is to mix local wisdom and dreams with the expertise and experience of professionals, to design a concept for the new campus. Architects, engineers, planners, and professionals from the hotel, conference, and technology industries will be in Howard for the two-day event.

“This campus will never be successful if it doesn’t live in the hearts of the people of Miner County,” said Joe Bartmann of the Rural Learning Center staff. “That’s why it’s so important they play a big part in deciding what kinds of things will happen in this place and how it all might look and fit together.” Randy Parry pointed out at the MCCR Annual Meeting this past Saturday how critical local people are to the possibility of building the campus. “It won’t happen at all if Miner County people aren’t involved,” said Parry. “We really do need the community to help create and support this project.”

The event will begin on Tuesday, April 29 at 10:30am at the Howard Legion Hall with an introduction and update on the work that has been done so far, and the ideas that have been gathered. The public is invited to participate in round table discussions and visioning sessions throughout the day on Tuesday. At 7pm on Tuesday, the design team will host a Town Hall meeting at the Howard High School Gym where the public will get an update of the day’s work, provide ideas and feedback, and use hand held live voting technology to select preferred design elements and a look and feel for campus buildings.

Day Two of the campus design charrette will be all about designing and sketching concepts of buildings and how they might fit together. The design studio will be set up at the Legion Hall, and the public is welcome to stop in and watch the team work throughout the day from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm. At 4:30pm at the Legion Hall the design team will present a series of conceptual drawings and invite public feedback and ideas.

Campus Design Workshop 1: Training

On April 1, 2008 The Rural Learning Center, MCCR and Koch Hazard Architects hosted the first of three design workshops as part of the Rural Learning Center Campus design charrette. This first workshop, held at the Howard Municipal Building, focussed on the training programming that could be offered at the Howard campus. Specifically, participants zeroed in on the potential to provide renewable energy industry technical training, and community learning around green energy.

Participants included Howard City Council members, MCCR and RLC board members, Howard school board members, Miner County Commissioners, architects from Koch Hazard, energy industry leaders from Energy Maintenance Service and Knight & Carver, technology industry leaders from Bowden Productions and Horizon Health Care and others.

Below are sketched notes from the session. A more detailed learning summary can be downloaded as a pdf by clicking here. See more pictures from the first workshop session by clicking here.