The expansion of IYRS’s campus got underway last week on Spring Wharf, where an old building is being demolished to make way for a new 20,000 square foot state-of-the-art structure on a half-acre site the school acquired in 2015.
The new site, adjacent to the IYRS’s Newport campus, will be home to new programs in digital manufacturing and the new home to IYRS’s existing Bristol programs in Composite Technology and Marine Systems.
On June 8th, it was announced that IYRS had received a $670,000 grant from the van Beuren Charitable Foundation in support of the school’s Campaign for the Future of IYRS, which includes the new building that allows IYRS to consolidate its programs in Newport and add additional new programs and maker spaces.
That gift will be used in support of the construction of the new building, which is estimated to cost approximately $6mm. The school plans to invest an additional $1mm in equipment, tools and facilities build-out to house up to four full-time accredited programs and laboratory space for collaborations between IYRS programs, with other schools, and with industry partners. IYRS is consolidating its two programs from Bristol, RI onto the Newport campus and plans to add a new program immediately in innovative manufacturing when the building is complete.
“There will be a lot of modern making going on in the new building, using advanced technology and materials like carbon fiber, composites and metals. Along-side our boatbuilding and restoration program that focuses on woodworking, we will have a full range of materials at IYRS – effectively becoming materials agnostic,” says Terry Nathan, President of IYRS in a preparedrelease back in June. “We teach people to make, and at a very high level.”
According to IYRS, the building is scheduled to be in service by fall 2017. Boston-based William Wilson Architects, owned by local architect Bill Wilson, designed the new building, and the Newport-based firm Farrar & Associates will manage the construction. Farrar performed the same function for IYRS in 2009 when the school restored it historic 1831 mill building. That facility houses the school’s library, admin offices, and commercial tenants.
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