My dear friends, aloha and bonjour! I've been looking forward to meeting with you today. The start of a new academic year is always so exciting. I have a lot to cover, so I'm going to go fast, and I'm just going to give some highlights. We'll be having a campus update next Thursday afternoon. Watch the bulletin where I'll go into details. I'll have a chance to answer some questions. If you want to learn more, I'm also available for department meetings, birthday parties, baby luau, and bar mitzvahs.
So, really quick, TVA is going nicely. Phase two is coming along very quickly. This week, you saw buildings D, E, and F come down relatively smoothly because all we asked was the termites holding hands to let go, and they just kind of melted away. Hales 11 through 13 are also coming up very quick. We're frantically working on those so that we can provide students a good living experience, especially those who are currently living off campus. Our solar project is under review with HECO (Hawaiian Electric Company), our utility company, and by the end of next year, 100% of our electrical needs will be met by solar, that includes the temple and the Polynesian Cultural Centre, too. So we're really excited about that.
Here's the main event, the new McKay construction. I'm thankful for everyone's input and their efforts. We have seen God's hand countless times in this project so far. We are planning to replace 50% of our academic space on campus over the next few years. It's quite an endeavor. I'm excited to show you some renderings of our latest work. The plans have been submitted for permitting, so this is getting real. We hope to be able to start construction next summer. The design priorities are just this is the why, right? So why are we doing all this? We need to reduce and simplify. We need to be flexible and adaptable. We need to enhance the student experience, and we need to embed the mission and the vision of the university. Last year, I showed you an aerial flyover, and we've updated that with the latest plans, the plans that we've submitted. So, there are still some things that are conceptual, but most of this is baked in. Let's go ahead and roll that video.
VIDEO
So, this is the front of campus, and this is the new welcome center and administration building. One of the key things we've wanted to do is to help the student experience so they don't have to go all over the place their first day and week on campus; they can come to this building. This welcome center has some updates that helped to show the vision of the university, the past, the present, and the future. There are five main buildings, and so you can kind of see this as we go through the main building. There will be two-story classroom buildings. There's a central plaza that goes all the way through. We're excited to have that. Students will be able to be, it's a happening place until midnight. This is the student entrance to the main student building. It's a three-story building that will have all the student activities on the first floor, faculty offices, and then the top floor is executive offices. There'll be some outdoor pavilions. Again, that central walkway.
Here's where I pause for applause. Thank you. That was pretty cheap, but thank you for indulging me, I appreciate that. So, again, this is that aerial overview. You can see how we're redoing the little circle so that it's just tangential to the academic oval. This is the administration building with the welcome center right in the middle. This is inside that welcome center, where again it'll help to tell the story of the university and its prophetic promise. We're really excited about this; this is going to be an amazing place to learn about why we're here.
So, let me go back. Thank you, President. You can see a picture up in the kind of floating right now. We have a picture of the Savior. We've got that our for commission from some artists right now that closes, I think, today. And so we will have some of the process to go through the bids. We are grateful to have our university art faculty as well as our special projects department. This is a big deal, and it's going to be really cool to help us focus on the centrality of the Savior.
This is an overview of kind of that central plaza. This is the outdoor of the auditorium building. So the entrance, this is looking from the Banyan Dining Hall. Pretty excited about that. Again, that central walkway and as I mentioned, this is where students will walk into campus from the hallways in the back. So this is kind of on the corner where the Social Science building is right now.
We have some interiors. So this is the auditorium building lobby. This is inside the auditorium. Here's a lobby of one of the classroom buildings. Here's one of the classrooms. This is the student center lobby, building E is what we call it. So, the snack bar is on one side. There's some student activities on the other. This is the game room. Student activity rooms, we're excited about this. These will be rooms that'll seat six to eight students and there's a big TV. They can watch a movie, play their Mario Kart, do karaoke, whatever they'd like to do. Nice glass walls so that we can watch what they're doing. This is a reception area in that administration building. Here's an example, one of the conference rooms, shows faculty offices. This is a rendering of the centralized tutoring center. We're really excited about this. All a one-stop shop for students and all their tutoring needs. This will be in that main building E.
Okay, so this is really complicated to try and replace half of campus while we keep the campus running, and so we have a time-lapse video. This takes some explanation, but it kind of gives you an idea. And again, I'm happy to answer specific questions later on. Let's go ahead and roll that video.
VIDEO
So, on the top right hows kind of the timeline, and then on the bottom in the middle is kind of the months and years. So, the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to remodel the library. Those arrows are kind of the construction fencing. So, this is what you'll do to get around campus. Next spring, you'll see the academic oval will start to work on that because we need to upgrade the sewer system. So, getting onto campus will be fun.
Once we are done with that, then you can see that the south side of the library, the old library, will be demolished, and if it were only that easy to demolish that, but again, you can see the flow of what has to happen that construction fencing. Once we're done with that, then the front part of McKay comes down, so we can build those three new buildings, and so you can see the front part of McKay will come down. Students will still be able to walk through, and then next fall, the Aloha Center will come down. During that time, we'll be building those two classroom, buildings A and C, and then the building B in front, that's the welcome center and the administration building.
Week 200 will be a nice week for us. Once that's done, then the rest of the McKay building will come down as well as the McKay faculty building and the little theater, and it will take another two and a half years to build that final building. Once that's done, if you blink, you might miss it, those portable buildings come down, and then by 2031, spring of 2031, we should be completely done with all of that construction. We're pretty excited about the phasing of this. There's been a lot of expertise in how we're going to keep the campus running, how we're gonna keep things going, and this is exciting. Students will be able to see at least some new buildings two and a half years into it.
I'm so thankful. This construction shows an unprecedented investment by the Board of Trustees and what they're committing to the little slice of heaven that we have here in Laie. I know that whether it's preparing for new buildings, becoming even more laser-focused on students from Oceania and the Asian Rim. Embracing and enhancing the student experience, or just our everyday work—the journey that we're on that Isaiah mentioned, it's important, and we can only succeed as we strive to become better disciples of our Savior. The power of covenants is real, and the joy of living those covenants is important. The enabling power of our Savior's atoning sacrifice is what we will need to lean on to become the university that the Lord expects us to be. I'm thankful to be part of it with you. I'm thankful for all that you do, and I look forward to changing this campus inside and out over the next few years. I share that in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.