A donor-driven project restroom and shower building project at the Cooper Center for Environmental Learning is moving a step forward.
The Cooper Center is a collaboration between Tucson Unified School District and the University of Arizona College of Education. TUSD is responsible for facility maintenance and utilities at the center. The UA College of Education takes care of operations and programs, including fundraising.
At its Oct. 17 meeting, the TUSD Governing Board gave Cooper Center, also known as Camp Cooper, its blessing to finalize designs and construction documents.
The board approved using the district’s job order contract fund to contract with a pre-qualified contractor to complete phase I of the project.
The UA and TUSD partnership has received $1.9 million in donations for this project from private donors and local foundations.
Eighty percent of the center’s programs serve TUSD students. However, the outdoor learning space is open to all Southern Arizona schools. More than 140,000 students have learned at the Cooper Center since 1964. Among other services, Camp Cooper is a popular location for field trips, giving students a safe, accessible place to experience nature while enhancing classroom learning.
Several public comment speakers at Tuesday’s meeting expressed support for the project, which does not use TUSD capital funds. The agenda item passed unanimously.
Once design and construction documents are completed, the next step will be to negotiate a guaranteed maximum price with the selected contractor.
Creativity Day
More than 100 high school juniors and seniors throughout Tucson will participate in the TENWEST Impact Festival’s Creativity Day this November, thanks to a partnership with Pima CommunityShare and Startup Tucson.
Founded in 2015, TENWEST, an event of Startup Tucson, describes itself as a celebration of the growing innovation, creative and entrepreneurial ecosystems in Southern Arizona.
Taking place Nov. 4-10, the festival in downtown Tucson showcases the connectivity between technology, entrepreneurship, creativity, culture and impact. This year, during Creativity Day of the conference on Nov. 8, students are being invited to explore an array of creative content careers that aren’t always seen inside the classroom.
Creativity Day at the Tucson Convention Center will feature sessions on audio recording with Tucson company Cloud Microphones, creative writing, makerspaces with UA’s CATalyst team, media, content creation and branding, selling your art and more. Keynote presenters for the day include Joe O’Connell of Creative Machines and Jenny Ball of international band Jenny and the Mexicats and Silvana Estrada.
