Dear CCA Community,

When I met with you early this semester at the all-faculty and all-staff meetings, I shared a proposed timeline for construction of CCA’s Double Ground campus that would put “shovel in the ground” this spring, pending board approval. I am thrilled to announce that yesterday afternoon, CCA’s Board of Trustees enthusiastically and unanimously approved a resolution to move forward. Our goal is to begin construction in late spring 2020, with completion and full occupancy of the new campus by fall 2022.

This is a moment many years in the making, involving the ingenuity and input of hundreds of people—faculty, staff, students, alumni, planners, designers, builders, city officials, community members, donors, trustees, and friends. From 2006, when we began asking how we might unify our two campuses, through more than a decade of visioning, planning, community discussion, fundraising, and building, we are now ready to embark on the next phase of building a unified, forward-looking facility befitting the sustainable living and learning community for our students that CCA’s mission and values demand.

The opportunity that lies before our community is unique—in a time of rapidly changing technologies; critical social, cultural, and environmental concerns; and substantive rethinking of pedagogy, we find ourselves in the enviable position of being able to conceive and create a college of arts that honors the past and embraces the future, in which curriculum, craft, and community inform the built environment designed to inspire and advance them.

Together, we are moving forward to complete a years-in-the-making process of unification that will enable us to redefine arts education for a changing world, while upholding the mission, values, and educational model that have defined CCA for more than a century.

As Art Gensler, chair of CCA’s Board of Trustees, said yesterday, “We’re ready to go!”

Sincerely,

Stephen Beal

President