The $177 million dorm-classroom project is being fast-tracked with a completion date of July 2013.
This is a look at the new $177 million Commonwealth College dorm and classroom building to be built at UMass over the next two years.AMHERST - Drive or walk around the University of Massachusetts campus and you’ll see scaffolding, hard hats, safety vests and construction equipment as a decade’s long growth spurt continues.
And June 1, the latest project begins construction, the $177 million Commonwealth Honors College residential complex - a building that will provide a community for the college’s scholars. The building, to be built between Boyden and the new Recreational Center, is being fast-tracked with a summer of 2013 completion.
Dimeo Construction of Providence, R.I. is the general contractor, said UMass spokesman Edward F. Blaguszewski. That company built the $93 million North Residential Area dorm project, which opened in 2006. During the summer, nearby Hicks Way will be closed to traffic as electrical and water is attended to, he said.
The building will provide space for 1,500 students as well as classrooms. The university is borrowing the money from the UMass Building Authority but the loan will be repaid by room fees paid by the students who will live there through their dorm fees.
This is the latest project beginning under the tenure of Joyce M. Hatch, the retiring vice chancellor for administration and finance. And while many projects were built during her time here, she said many had been in the works for more than a decade. “A lot of things came together,” Hatch said.
Hatch who’s leaving her post at the end of June talked about the state of the campus building plan - recent accomplishments and what’s on the horizon. Facilities and campus planning was part of her job responsibilities.
Some of the projects this past decade were built out of necessity with little state help - take the central heating plant which came on line in 2008. Before she became vice chancellor in 2002, her predecessor and others were lobbying the state trying to convince officials to fund it. “It didn’t meet environmental standards. It out lived its life,” she said, but that wasn’t enough. Finally the university had to agree to had to borrow $100 million.
The $26.5 million Studio Arts Building, which a also opened that year, was built because the state only allowed the school to use some of the existing classrooms with the promise of a new building.
And while state money was hard to come by early on, the state “has been stepping up, coming through for funding for a number of the new projects in recent years,” she said. The state is paying $65 of the $85 million cost of a new academic building being erected on the north pond site and expected to be ready to open in 2014.
The state is contributing $100 million to the new laboratory science building and shell with $56.5 million coming from the campus for the project. That new building will provide 310,000 square feet of research space, and its north wing will be occupied by the fall of 2012. The Integrated Science Building, which opened in 2009, has provided labs and classroom but not research space.
Research is being conducted in buildings that are decades old, said Hatch. Goessman Laboratory was built in the 1920s and the Lederle Graduate Research Center was built in 1973 and while labs have been upgraded, the buildings haven’t been. “We’re going to be poised to take the next step for research,” she said.
“We have terrific researchers and we have terrific faculty...we’re trying to keep them.” UMass needs the new facilities to catch up with their requirements, she said.
“It’s absolutely terrific,” Hatch said of the all that’s in the works. “Every single one of these buildings is needed.” And now with these are underway, UMass can “look out ahead, instead of reacting to the problems at hand.”
Hatch officially retires June 30 but said she’ll be back in July part-time to help in the transition. Hatch has been at UMass since 1982 working at several budget office positions. During that time, she also earned her master’s through the School of Management.