Educational Construction

Update Your Offices by Adding Full Wall Planning Surfaces

Update Your Office with Full Wall Planning Surface

Tired of the same old boring walls in your conference room? How about that size challenged white board that always seems to run out of space and needs to be erased just when ideas are really flowing?   A&K Painting Company has winning solutions for your team. We can turn your offices and meeting rooms into exceptional work and learning spaces, by adding planning and work surfaces to any wall or area of your choosing.

We provide the design know how and many options to update and improve the value of your offices.  A&K Painting is the recognized commercial painting contractor with expertise in paint and wallcovering.  We make it easy to turn a section of a wall, a whole wall or a whole room into a dry erase work surface.  We can turn your conference room’s walls into excellent learning tools by utilizing these types of products.  We offer many options and different types of material to choose from based on your, needs, preferences and budget. CRE Pros, property owners and others, contact the A&K Painting Team to add innovative learning environments.

Central Piedmont Community College Works to Expand and Meet Demands

Central Piedmont Community College

The surging enrollment at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte has created expansion needs. CPCC has had a 35 percent growth in full-time students from 2005 to 2012.  According to an article about CPCC’s growth needs on the Charlotte Observer’s website, North Carolina community colleges are required to provide 100 square feet of instructional space for every full-time student and CPCC averages just 58 square feet per student over its six campuses.

The Observer article quoted CPCC President Tony Zeiss saying “We’ve grown so rapidly and have fallen so far behind in space that, in many instances, we’ve had to turn people away,” he said. “This community faces the same skills gap that the rest of America faces. We have the ability to train people, but we need the labs and space to do it.

To meet requirements and to plan for the future, the school has identified 20 projects that will add space with a total cost of $430 million. CPCC is likely to request Mecklenburg County commissioners to grant a bond referendum that will fund a three year plan for CPCC’s top 10 projects.  Lland acquisitions at five CPCC campuses and five construction projects will provide the classroom and lab space to train students for mostly health sciences, energy and information technology jobs.  “The college needs new and renovated classrooms, labs and support space to meet Mecklenburg’s educational and training needs and prepare workers for jobs,” the article quoted Zeiss.

We’re proud to be a part of the growth in Mecklenburg County and the Carolinas.
Similarly, due to growth, A&K Painting Company had a demand for expanded training and operations space.  To better serve our customers, last year we made the decision to invest in our training and operations capacity and created the OTS, our Operations Training Showroom.  The state-of-the-art training facility combined with a new showroom and operations facility establishes A&K as the leading commercial painting contractor.

The Water Fountain Evolves

photograph of drinking fountain for water bottles

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, James R. Hagerty reveals a growing trend in water fountain use:  people are carrying reusable water bottles, and instead of drinking from water fountains, they just want to refill their water bottles, but the basic drinking fountain that has been a steady seller for decades isn’t working well for these people.  The problem that arises from the traditional water fountain is the awkward angle they have to hold the bottle to refill it- which results in wet shoes or clothes from the splashing water.

Keeping this new water fountain user in mind, new types of fountains, designed to refill bottles have been introduced.  According to Hagerty, “water is more popular as Americans reduce consumption of high-calorie soft drinks.  Tap and bottled water accounted for around 30% of the typical American’s liquid intake last year, up from 16% two decades before.  Nearly half of that water came from taps, including drinking fountains”.  So, this new fountain, developed specifically for refilling bottles, couldn’t have been introduced at a better time than now.  Also, with more people choosing to reuse and recycle, this water fountain provides an environmentally friendly alternative to tossing another plastic water bottle in a landfill.

This new trend is sweeping across college campuses, so Muhlenberg College began buying Elkay fountains after students campaigned against what they saw as plastic-bottle waste.  David Rabold, capital projects manager at Muhlenberg, says “sales of bottle water on campus have fallen 90% since the EZH2O fountains were installed”.  If this trend is reaching hundreds of colleges and universities, then it won’t be long before it sweeps across corporate America.  Commercial real estate investors could take advantage of this trend by offering these new bottle-filling water fountains in new construction and renovations to attract a new breed of environmentally and health conscious workers.