CCU Celebrates Groundbreaking on 60,000-square-foot Armstrong Center
The facility will serve as the university's signature academic building and provide a new campus home for the School of Music.
Nearly 1,000 students, alumni, donors, faculty, and staff joined Colorado Christian University leadership in a series of groundbreaking ceremonies to commemorate the official start of construction on the Armstrong Center. The facility will serve as the academic and spiritual cornerstone of the university’s Lakewood campus when completed. It is named in honor of former U.S. Senator and CCU President Bill Armstrong.
"Today's events are not about the past," said Wil Armstrong, chair of the CCU Board of Trustees and son of Bill Armstrong, while addressing the student body. "The Armstrong Center is about the future. While you may not have known my dad, the reality is many years ago, he was thinking about you. In 2006, when he began his work at CCU he envisioned a transformed campus with great buildings. He said, 'Great buildings don't make a great university, but a great university requires great buildings.'"
The $40 million, 60,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility is the fifth and most ambitious project since 2015 in CCU's development plan to transform the Lakewood campus into a world-class training ground for future business, church, and world leaders. Saunders Construction is serving as the general contractor. Construction is expected to be complete in approximately 16 months.
"Today is a great day for Colorado Christian University as we mark a ground blessing for this signature building," said Eric Hogue, president-elect and vice president of university advancement. "Our most prayerful, generous, constant-in-support partners, patrons, and kingdom brothers and sisters made this possible through God's hand."
The Armstrong Center will allow the School of Music to return to CCU's main campus, will house an expanded library, feature a 500-seat performance theater, will include industry-leading digital media studios, and will be home to the University's first dedicated chapel space recently named the Terry and Betsy Considine Chapel.
"At CCU, we believe God is calling us to help raise up the next generation of great leaders, great servants, our most-outstanding men and women to lead our country," said Wil Armstrong. "This is about you. It's not about the buildings; it's what goes on inside the buildings."
Following two terms in the U.S. Senate and a successful business career, Bill Armstrong served as president of CCU for nearly a decade beginning in 2006. He displayed an uncommon vision for his times by adopting the University's Strategic Priorities at the beginning of his presidency and by leading the University during a period of unprecedented growth. President Armstrong went home to be with Jesus in 2016 following a battle with cancer.