The Paper and Stationery building, a renovation of the Urban Solutions Center, is a facility supporting innovative, high-demand programs in science and technology that are at the very core of the community’s emerging identity. The first floor will serve as a student commons, an area for informal meetings and gatherings, and an event venue. The ground floor will also house what is being called a “tinker” lab, a space available for student projects and for using equipment and technology like 3D printers. The second floor, at the Jefferson Avenue level, will have multiple studio classrooms and seminar spaces, plus an urban design lab that will support a new Master of Arts in community planning. The third and fourth floors will have biomedical research labs to support a new Bachelor of Science program in biomedical sciences, plus collaboration spaces, classrooms, and electrical engineering labs, to support a Bachelor of Science program in electrical engineering. The building has been brought up to modern seismic standards. Where possible, the existing massive interior wood beams and columns that came from the Northwest’s old-growth forests were reclaimed. The project is aiming for LEED Gold certification. Construction began in early 2016. The ability of UW Tacoma to provide the capacity necessary to meet its mandate for higher education opportunities in the south Puget Sound region is directly reliant on this project, which provides capacity for UW Tacoma’s to accommodate a projected enrollment of 5,800 full-time students over the next few years.