Indian River State College Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship grand opening

By Eric Pfahler, TCPalm.com

FORT PIERCE — Indian River State College's Brown Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship includes a removable house, solar farm and nuclear flow loop simulator — minus the nuclear materials.

The public is invited to a grand opening event for the $21.5 million, 65,000-square-foot building at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at the IRSC main campus on Virginia Avenue and 35th Street.

"It's a totally different building for us," IRSC President Ed Massey said. "Many times you build an education building and you offer specific programs within that building. This is going to be a building where we partner with businesses. We're going to be partnering with people who have new and creative ideas that could lead to new patents in terms of energy creation and/or building construction."

Upon entering the building, visitors and students can check to see how much electricity is being used on each of the building's three floors and how much carbon dioxide is emitted in each room.

Outside, the building is adjacent to wind turbines and a field of 150 solar panels used to both test the efficiency of the products and power a portion of the building.

During regular school hours, the building will hold between 400 and 500 students, including about 80 in the various laboratories, According to IRSC, about 180 local construction jobs were created with the building.

But given the capabilities of the facility, some traditional and nontraditional students plan to be in the building far more than normal school hours, said Kevin Cooper, IRSC's director of advanced technology.

"We live in this room," said Charlotte Rivera, a civil engineering major from Port St. Lucie. "We will be in the labs."


Read more about the new business center