Archived Edition: January 27, 2004 | Back to Current	Jul 31, 2010

Library planning
Chris Richardson - MANAGING EDITOR

The Board of Trustees recently granted approval for advanced design and planning work on a slate of building projects across campus. In addition to authorizing the funds necessary to build the new student center, the Board responded positively to updated proposals for the new library complex project to replace Sawyer Library and the faculty office building attached to Stetson Hall.

While accurate budget estimates and final decisions on exactly what, when and how to accomplish the grand goals of the project are still months or years away, development work on the first phase of the 10-year project is currently underway. The goals of the project include returning Stetson to its original use as the College’s primary library and demolishing Sawyer and constructing two new academic buildings to house faculty offices, classrooms, group study spaces and a technology center.

The College received approval in mid-December from the Williamstown Zoning Board of Appeals to exceed the town’s 35-foot height limit on new construction. This approval, combined with the Board’s decision last weekend to approve further design funds, allows the library center committee and architectural firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson to begin specific planning for the first phase, according to Dave Pilachowski, College librarian and co-chair of the library committee.

The initial stages of the project include moving the economics department out of Fernald House so that it can be demolished to make room for construction of a new academic building north of Sawyer library. According to Pilachowski, while plans are not yet finalized, the “working assumption is that the ‘North Building’ will have approximately 120 faculty offices” along with seminar classrooms, group study spaces and a faculty technology center.

Final decisions about where to relocate the economics department and what program elements to include in this first building are expected to be made this spring, with actual construction work to begin as early as next summer.

“Our best-case scenario would be to obtain Senior Staff and Board of Trustees approval to begin construction in the summer of 2005,” Pilachowski said.

According to current plans, once completed, the North Building will house faculty offices now located in the annexes to Stetson Hall, which will be demolished, leaving the historically significant 1923 footprint intact. Next, a new library addition will be constructed behind Stetson, transforming it into the front entrance of the main campus library.

Finally, Sawyer will be demolished with the exception of the basement, which will be left as underground storage for lesser-used library collections and another new academic building that will be constructed just south of that site.

Organizing the project into such stages offers both practical and financial advantages. Library and faculty office services are absolutely essential to the College and must be maintained during the academic year. Also, the phased approach allows the College to spread the financial burden – which could grow as large as $100 million – over several years.

An accurate budget picture may not be determined for some time, as schematic designs for the various elements have not yet been produced. Still, the library center committee has several specific goals for each phase of the project and is committed to include all of them in the final designs.

According to Mark Lydon, project manager for the construction project, future budget concerns will likely be solved through the “efforts to optimize the design and achieve efficiencies rather than from eliminating any mission-critical components.”

“The team is working to establish the optimum ingredients for this large and long-term project,” Lydon said. “Value engineering and creative design approaches are tools which can be used to address budget challenges and will likely be considered before eliminating critical scope or program elements.”

Many of these elements are designed to rectify current problems. Offices will be interspersed with group study spaces along the model used in the Unified Science Center in order to promote more faculty-student interaction than is possible in the current Stetson office complex or Sawyer.

Plans call for a technology center to be included somewhere in the complex to complement Jesup Hall and “significantly expand the expertise and equipment available to faculty who will be located in the library center project and their students,” Pilachowski said.

A primary advantage of returning Stetson to its original purpose as the main library will be the proximity of the normal library stacks to a special collections library composed of the College archives and the Chapin Library of Rare Books, which are currently both located in Stetson.

“Sharing of special collections areas will foster joint instruction, using rare and unique items from both collections,” said Sylvia Kennick Brown, College archivist. “Because of security and preservation concerns, it is not known how the special collections libraries will relate physically to the main library proper. At the very least, we hope that proximity within the building will promote use of these outstanding collections.”

The committee has also been investigating whether current parking facilities will be adequate to serve the new complex. “The parking situation is under review to determine the needs, budget implications and permitting requirements,” Pilachowski said.

The committee has engaged in discussions about how the exterior design of the new buildings will relate to surrounding structures, particularly Stetson, Lehman and Chapin. According to Michael Brown, professor of anthropology and co-chair of the library center committee, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson was chosen as the architectural firm for the project in part because of their sensitivity to the architectural context of the buildings.

“Their work elsewhere suggests that the new buildings will echo the proportions and materials of existing structures but use a modern design idiom,” Brown said.

Architects working on the library center project have met with representatives from the Polshek Partnership who are designing the new student center and discussed how the two projects may complement one another.

The new library center is just one of several projects currently under construction or development. The Trustees also approved funding for the planned renovations to Prospect House during the summers of 2004 and 2005. The construction will convert 95 percent of the rooms into singles and open up hallways and common spaces to promote socializing.

Meanwhile, the extreme cold has caused minor delays in construction on several campus projects. However, as there are always a number of non-working days built into every New England construction schedule to account for such weather vagaries, no major setbacks have occurred.

Workers on the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance have installed over 90 percent of the structural steel and recently celebrated a topping-off ceremony marking the placement of the highest point of steel on the structure.

A large portion of the building has been temporarily enclosed and heated with steam from the College’s heating plant, which has allowed workers to make progress even in the frigid temperatures. The first shipment of limestone for the exterior cladding just arrived from Germany, and the center is expected to open in spring 2005.

Construction on the office building replacing the B&L Service Station is now underway since ground contamination issues have been satisfied. Workers are currently fabricating framing components and should return to the site this week, weather permitting. The building is slated to open June 2005.