Ah, that new classroom smell.

CSUN students and faculty will have a long-awaited treat when they return to campus after Spring Break. The recently completed, 62,474-square-foot Maple Hall will open its doors to classes and campus life on March 25. The sparkling new building is located south of Sierra Hall, adjacent to Manzanita Hall and West University Drive. It’s the campus’ first new academic classroom building since Chaparral Hall, home to the Department of Biology, opened in 2009, according to Division of Academic Affairs leadership.

The new building adds much-needed classrooms and lecture halls — including a 2,980-square-foot lecture hall, two smaller lecture halls and two seminar rooms — with flexible seating, the latest audiovisual (AV) equipment and energy-efficient design to the west side of campus, one of the university’s busiest areas. The $49.9-million project is financed by CSU state funds and took about two years to complete.

CSUN Today got a sneak-peek tour on March 11, with Callie Juarez, of CSUN’s academic resources and planning department, as well as a “hardhat tour” during construction in fall 2023 with Noah Rubin, campus architect and director of design and construction. Here’s the scoop:

What can students most look forward to inside Maple Hall?

Maple Hall’s best feature is the huge three-story atrium and common space filled with natural light, Rubin said. The brand-new, modern building features cutting-edge lecture halls and classrooms. It boasts some of the most (if not the most) air-conditioned student hangout spaces on campus, plus plenty of comfortable furniture, group study rooms and collaborative spaces — and a huge, multi-stall gender-inclusive restroom. There’s even a lactation room upstairs.

When will students be able to start using Maple Hall?

Juarez and team are working on the massive task of moving 433 classes from the 1960s-era Sierra Hall into Maple Hall. Students can enjoy Maple Hall’s many indoor and outdoor study and hangout spaces as soon as Monday, March 25, when classes begin there. More details about a grand opening or celebration in 2024 are still TBD.

What’s our favorite part of the new Maple Hall?

Rubin and our editorial team agreed: the three-story atrium, which features entrances from three sides of the building.

“We paid particular attention to building in student collaboration spaces into the lobby, the corridors, the waiting areas — we built in seating, so students aren’t sitting on the floor,” said Ken Rosenthal, associate vice president of facilities development and operations, when CSUN broke ground on the building. “These are inspirational rooms. They’re daylit, they’re flexible, they have the latest AV.”

Sustainability facts:

Maple Hall employs a “heat recovery chiller,” technology that’s fairly new to CSUN (this is the second building to use it, after Monterey Hall), Rubin said. A heat recovery chiller takes excess heat (that would otherwise be wasted) from the campus’ central chilled water system and uses it to provide the building with free heating, saving energy.

The building also takes advantage of natural light, LED lighting and drought-tolerant, native plant landscaping around its exterior.

What’s next?

Maple Hall’s opening clears the way for the renovation of its older counterpart, Sierra Hall — as classes there are shifted to the new building — but approval and funding for Sierra renovation is still pending, Rosenthal said. “As a building with general-purpose classrooms, all colleges may use the new rooms [in Maple Hall],” he said. “It takes all the [Sierra Hall] classrooms and frees them up to be used as ‘swing space.’ … We will be studying options for Sierra Hall renovations. Faculty offices, laboratories and administrative offices will remain in Sierra Hall.”

classes, Featured, Maple Hall, Sierra Hall, Sustainability