Community Consolidated School District 59 employs over 800 full-time employees serving nearly 75,000 residents and covering roughly 24 square miles. ARCON was engaged by CCSD 59 to plan and design a building on an existing, underutilized, CCSD 59 property that would support their employee professional development and training needs, office space for the district administration departments, and the district central warehouse and maintenance departments. The challenge was to plan a single facility that would allow each of these three programs to function independently, yet coexist to the extent that shared space efficiencies could be realized. Planning focused on the creation of spaces that model flexibility and the encouragement of intentional and spontaneous collaboration opportunities in line with the District’s mission.
Visitors will enter through a public zone, housing 6 professional development spaces grouped around an open lobby/casual dining space with views and access to an outdoor landscaped patio. Each of these meeting spaces can be subdivided or combined to model a large variety of classroom configurations and training room shapes. Included is the ability to transform several of these spaces into a Board of Education public meeting room. The Public Zone also accommodates spaces for student registration, employee orientation and processing, emergency response, reception, and functional support.
