UTEP Celebrates Advanced Manufacturing and Aerospace Center Construction Milestone

EL PASO, TX – The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and Sundt Construction celebrated the construction of the Aerospace and Advanced Manufacturing Center (AMAC).

The event marked the placement of the last beam in the US$80 million building’s structure and represented significant progress toward its completion, scheduled for December 2024.

The AMAC, boasting a footprint of nearly 93,000 square feet, will house UTEP’s Aerospace Center and the W.M. Keck Center for 3D Innovation, boosting research and teaching at the university. Its exterior design will reflect the distinctive Bhutanese architectural style of the UTEP campus.

UTEP President Heather Wilson stressed the importance of the center as a symbol of Texas State’s commitment to research and innovation in areas such as additive manufacturing, aeronautics and space.

About 100 UTEP construction workers, students, faculty and staff attended the ceremony, where they were invited to sign the beam as a symbol of their participation in the project.

Joseph Ricillo, vice president and regional director of El Paso at Sundt, mentioned that the ceremony was a crucial milestone in the construction schedule and that the team was pleased to share this accomplishment with the university community.

The building will provide 37 new research and manufacturing laboratories as well as administrative offices. The new facility is expected to benefit more than 600 undergraduate and graduate students each year.

The AMAC will be located at the corner of Rim Rd and Hawthorne St., just northeast of the UTEP Chemistry and Computer Science building. Occupancy of the building is expected to be completed in spring 2025.