Archived Edition: February 07, 2007 | Back to Current	Jul 31, 2010

Construction to spring ahead in March
Jonathan Galinsky - Opinions Editor

Those who enjoy long strolls around campus are in for a treat next month. According to a Jan. 24 project update from the Stetson-Sawyer architects and committee, workers plan to break ground on the new project in mid-March. The immediate impact on most College pedestrians will be detour-filled treks around the center of campus as the work will necessitate several fenced-in construction sites around Sawyer Library and Stetson Hall.

Rock excavation for the north and south buildings of the new complex is slated to begin over spring break. Once fences go up around the construction sites, students walking between the east and west sides of campus will be forced to go along sidewalks next to Mission Park Drive and Route 2 or through Sawyer Library.

The fencing for the north academic building will extend from the north side of Sawyer Library to Mission Park Drive, covering most of Sawyer Library Drive on the east and extending west to Bernhard Music Center. The site for the south academic building will occupy nearly all of Sawyer Lawn, extending east to occupy some of the space behind Hopkins Hall as well. Workers will construct an additional access road to the southern site from Route 2.

During the presentation over Winter Study, which was open to the public and attended by a large number of faculty members and about a dozen students, architects Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and project co-chairs Dave Pilachowski and Michael Brown emphasized that the construction will not be invisible, but that crews will try to minimize its impact on students. The first phase of the project, which will include blasting and rock excavations, “will unfortunately be the most disruptive,” Pilachowski said. “Our plan, though, is to schedule most disruptive work over spring break.” Crews will work from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., a schedule that aims to minimize some negative effects of construction, like noise.

Once landscaping around the new buildings is in place, transit around campus should return to normal, though with a few significant differences. Because of safety concerns from Congregational Church leaders, students on foot will no longer be able to use the popular path that runs through their parking lot. Additionally, Sawyer Library Drive will become

accessible exclusively to pedestrians and service vehicles.



Design Details



In addition to outlining the construction process, presenters displayed updated designs of Stetson Hall and tentative designs for the new Sawyer Library.

“The architects will restore Stetson,” Pilachowski said, “repairing and replacing surfaces and finishes in keeping with historic preservation practices.”

On the building’s first floor, the faculty lounge will go back to its original function as a grand reading room and the College archives space will become a computer intensive classroom, with rooms installed across the hall for satellite-uplink teleconferencing. Though Stetson’s lobby will maintain most of its current look, the east wall will receive a widened doorway so that pedestrian traffic can easily flow in and out of the Sawyer’s atrium. Almost all of these rooms will be open to students around the clock, with card access enforced when Sawyer Library is closed.

Chapin Library will retain its current function as the home of the College’s rare book and manuscript collections, but will get sophisticated temperature and humidity controls to help preserve those works. The library will also connect to a new special collections space on its fourth floor.

On Stetson’s top level, faculty offices will be emptied and refurbished during construction, but their occupants will return once the library opens.

Students will enter the new library through an atrium on its third floor, which will provide easy access to any of the library’s five levels. On most floors, book stacks will be on the north side of the library, and specialized spaces will be on the south side, with the two sides separated by stairways and open vertical spaces. The specialized spaces will include the special collections on the fourth floor, reading and reference areas that can be rearranged according to users’ needs on the third floor and high-end graphic stations, production areas, professional technology assistance resources and equipment loans – all run by Office for Information Technology (OIT) – on the second floor. The first level’s south end will be occupied by a parking lot, while the fifth will be devoted to book stacks.

In response to concerns about the availability of student study spaces, architects said that they “want to be able to seat 45 percent of the student body.” Though the new library’s nearly 600 seats will be less than those in the current library, the architects found that many of the current study spaces are unused because of their small size and poor condition.

The project’s schedule is on course, with the north and south academic buildings set to open in the fall of 2008. Workers will break ground on the new library once the academic buildings are done and expect to complete it by early 2011.