Visitors who come in the main entrance of the new DeVos Communication Center at Calvin College will first notice "the Forum," a small circular area with seating for 60-80 people designed to be a gathering place for planned and unplanned discussions on politics, public speaking, poetry and more.

Adjacent to the DeVos Center is the new Prince Conference Center. Visitors who use its main entrance will be greeted by a spacious lobby area, highlighted by a massive stone fireplace, designed for groups to gather for conversation, networking and more.

Campus architect Frank Gorman says the gathering theme is no accident.

"Both of these new buildings are significant structures," he says, "The DeVos Center is filled with offices, classrooms, a theater, audio and video studios. The Prince Center has meeting rooms and 69 hotel rooms. So there will be a lot going on in both places. But we also wanted both buildings to build a sense of community. So the main entrance areas became very important focal points for bringing people together."

The two buildings will officially be dedicated October 25-26, but will be in use prior to that weekend. In fact, professors from communication arts and sciences and political science are already moved into the 55,000-square-foot DeVos Communication Center. Classes are slated to begin in the building September 9. And events are scheduled for the 60,000-square-foot Prince Conference Center for early October, including a Kent County judicial debate on October 3.

Students and others who make use of the new buildings will be struck by both their beauty and their functionality. Near the Forum in the DeVos Center, for example, are four plasma screens. They'll be used to broadcast such channels as CNN and Fox News, but also can show scenes from classrooms in the building so that people visiting Calvin can get a taste of what life is like in a Calvin class. Upstairs from the main level are offices (including the CAS department's "pods") and labs for Calvin's renowned speech pathology program, including a new audiology booth for conducting hearing tests and increased space for Calvin's stroke rehab clinic. Interestingly that space will be so much better than the current set-up that Michigan State University is planning to offer graduate courses there, the first graduate-level courses in speech pathology and audiology available in Grand Rapids. Also upstairs are more gathering areas for students and faculty, including several lounge areas with comfortable chairs and couches and "fish tables" (so named because of their shape) which are made partly out of compressed sunflower seeds!

Below the main level in the DeVos Center is more technological wonder. A theater with seating for 150 people will be used for classes on film and culture and also for screenings of movies. Seating is in the form of customized theater seats from American Seating. There's also a distance learning classroom, an audio studio with a control room, a video studio with a control room and individual audio and video editing suites. All will be big pluses for students who are communication majors, including those specializing in telecommunications and business. In fact, the new building will triple the amount of audio and video editing space and quadruple the television studio space.

The Prince Conference Center will be a big plus for local groups who need flexible meeting space in a tranquil setting. The main level of the building includes not only the lobby and fireplace, but also a second lobby with two more huge stone fireplaces. The Great Hall is a 4,480 square foot meeting space that can hold up to 400 people for a banquet and about 450 people for a lecture. It can be divided into smaller spaces as well. Behind the Great Hall are smaller rooms, including a dining room that looks out onto Calvin's Ecosystem Preserve. There also is a President's Dining Room and a Board of Trustees room. Needless to say the new kitchen for the facility is state of the art.

The Prince Center features three levels of rooms with 23 rooms on each level for a total of 69. Each level offers 18 rooms with two queen-sized beds, four with a king and a sleeper sofa and one large suite, complete with a large desk and computer. Local company Billco manufactured all of the furniture for the rooms.

The two buildings, and Calvin's Crossing, the pedestrian overcrossing that spans the East Beltline and links the DeVos Center to near the Fine Arts Center on the west side of campus, make up a $25 million project for Calvin. Of that $20 million was donated via a pair of $10 million gifts to Calvin from the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation and the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation.

"The DeVos and Prince families are long-time supporters of Christian education," said Calvin College president Dr. Gaylen Byker at the time of the gift (July 1998). "Their support of these two new ventures means a great deal to all of us at Calvin. We are very grateful."

Elsa Prince is a 1954 Calvin graduate. Richard DeVos is a 1947 Calvin alum and winner of the school's 1982 Distinguished Alumni Award. His wife Helen is a 1947 Calvin graduate.