A plan to expand the student union at Reading Area Community College has been put on the shelf.<\/p>\n
Members of the Reading Planning Commission learned during a meeting Tuesday that the school has withdrawn its plans for expanding the building.<\/p>\n
The project hit a snag last month when, during a special meeting held to approve RACC\u2019s plan, the commission learned that additional investigation was needed to determine if it met federal regulations in addressing the building\u2019s location in a Schuylkill River floodplain.<\/p>\n
Parts of the building are about five inches below the base flood elevation. The expansion plan called for the use of flood-proofing methods, including using materials that won\u2019t be damaged by floods and doors that can be opened to allow water flow.<\/p>\n
However, at last month\u2019s meeting it was still unclear whether those measures were enough to move forward with the project.<\/p>\n
Commission members said Tuesday that an email from Dr. Susan Looney, RACC president, said the school plans to revisit the expansion project in the future with alternative design options.<\/p>\n
Looney also said in the email that she understands the city\u2019s need to balance its regulatory responsibility with the college\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n
Officials from RACC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The student union building, 25 S. Front St., was purchased by RACC in 1994, being renovated the following year to meet the school\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n
The new plan called for an expansion of the building\u2019s footprint and the addition of a second story. The extra space would be filled with student club offices, meeting spaces, a fitness center, computer lab, event space, food pantry and clothing closet for students in need and other amenities.<\/p>\n
The project was slated to cost about $15 million, with college officials saying they hope to cover some of that with grant money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A plan to expand the student union at Reading Area Community College has been put on the shelf.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,227,857,182,139,28,128,130,129,706],"class_list":{"0":"post-19897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-berks-county","9":"tag-education","10":"tag-essential-reading","11":"tag-local-news","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pennsylvania","14":"tag-reading-city","15":"tag-reading-city-headlines","16":"tag-reading-city-news","17":"tag-top-stories-reg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}