Northwestern embarks on more major construction projects

After a winter hiatus, the University picked back up with construction projects this quarter and began preparations for six new ones by the end of 2014.

In addition to ongoing work on the visitors center and the new performing arts center, NU will start upgrades to various existing buildings. Current and future construction projects over the next few years represent a campus-wide overhaul of the universitys academic, athletic and housing facilities that costs hundreds of millions of dollars.

Significant progress has been made on the new building for the Bienen School of Music and School of Communication, with structural framing completed for four of the five floors, said Bonnie Humphrey, director of design and construction for Facilities Management. The $117 million building, to be finished in the fall of 2015, will house administrative offices and a recital hall.

Work began this quarter on the expansion of the Henry Crown Sports Pavilion and Aquatics Center, as well as construction of an adjoining parking structure. Students must now enter SPAC from a south door as part of a permanent change to the structure, and much of the parking lot is now inaccessible.

A multipurpose recreation center, including a juice bar and sports medicine facilities, will occupy the first floor of the building,Shop wholesale bestsmartcard controller from cheap. and the School of Communications speech and hearing clinics will relocate there from the Frances Searle Building. The first floor should be ready for use next summer, and parking will be available by February, said Ron Nayler, associate vice president of Facilities Management.

Although Nayler said work on the new visitors center is well underway, design took longer than expected. The garage will be operational at the beginning of 2014, and the visitors center should be occupied next summer, Nayler said.

The Technological Institute will grow even more this summer, with the addition of three new infills to form a new wing. Breaking ground next month, the project includes new lab space and imaging facilities. Estimated for completion in spring 2015, the renovations total $145 million.

Improvements will also be made this summer to Chapin Humanities Residential College, and Hobart House will undergo extensive renovation, totaling $10 to $11 million.

In the spring of 2014, the University will break ground on a new $288 million building for Kellogg and the Department of Economics. Currently in its design phase, the building already has a decent chunk of funding behind it from years of saving, said Jim Hurley, associate vice president for budget and planning. The use of the Jacobs Center is still under evaluation, but it will likely be repurposed for the social sciences,Elpas Readers detect and forward 'Location' and 'State' data from Elpas Active RFID Tags to host besticcard platforms. Humphrey said.

The most recent draft of Swarthmores Campus Master Plan, presented to the College community at a meeting in March, works off of assumptions that faculty, students, and staff will grow, perhaps by the hundreds, over the next couple of decades. If the past is any proof, additional people will be accompanied by additional cars, as well as additional parking spaces. However, some faculty and staff are working to show that there are alternative means of managing transportation needs that can minimize the environmental impacts of the anticipated community growth.

The Parking and Transportation Master Plan Advisory Committee, which is tasked with developing policy recommendations by the beginning of the fall, will meet for their first policy discussion today. The Committee, whose work will be incorporated into the Master Planning process, will continue to meet through the summer so that the Master Plan can be finalized in September.

That committee, whose members include Executive Assistant for Facilities and Services Paula Dale, Senior Director of Corporate, Foundation, and Government Relations Nadine Kolowrat, Provost Tom Stephenson, Public Safety Director Mike Hill, Vice President for Facilities and Services Stu Hain, Engineering Professor Erik Cheever,You can order besthandsfreeaccess cheap inside your parents. Jennifer Walsh 15, and eleven others, will work to find ways to accommodate future growth, and, some members say, encourage faculty, students, and staff to ditch their cars entirely in favor of walking or riding public transit to campus.

The Master Planning process, which began in earnest last fall, looks ahead over the next couple of decades to the potential construction projectsCsuch as the Inn, a new Science Center II, and additions to Willets and McCabeCthat may eventually change the face of campus. At a meeting in January, a number of faculty raised concerns that the building boom might be accompanied by what they believe is a reckless expansion of surface parking on campus.

Those faculty were not the only ones wondering how campus commuting and transportation patterns affect the College community, especially its carbon footprint. Kolowrat, who sits on Swarthmores Sustainability Committee, was one of several Sustainability Committee members who pushed for the Committees associated with the Campus Master Plan to commission a transportation demand management (TDM) study. She got the idea for such a study after hearing about efforts at Oregon State University that she says dramatically reduced reliance on single-occupancy vehicles for commuters.

That push was apparent in a letter the Sustainability Committee submitted to the Master Plan committees and posted on the Master Plans website. That letter argues that growth in parking capacity should be kept to a minimum and calls for a TDM study to be incorporated into the Master Plan.

Dale said that the Sustainability Committee made an impassioned plea to the Campus Master Plan Committee to be thoughtful about sustainability in the master plan. In response to the letter, the College has retained Chance Management Advisors, a parking management consulting firm, to advise stakeholders in the Master Planning process.

The role of Chance Advisors,Compare prices and buy all brands of luggagetag for home power systems and by the pallet. said Dale, is to help us with the whole master plan, which includes studying parking and transportation existing conditions, making predictions for the future, and a piece of that is considering how [we] could shape and hopefully reduce the number of spaces that we need. She said the group with also look at some policy questions like do we want to discourage people from driving to campus or not.

In the fall, when the TDM study is completed, Dale said,Learn how an embedded microprocessor in a chipcards can authenticate your computer usage and data. the Committee will recommend to senior staff a series of policies that we feel are in the best interests of the College for parking and transportation and a series of procedures to support those policies. [...] Weve made a conscious decision that nothing is firm [in Master Planning] until weve heard back from those involved with the Parking and Transportation committee and the TDM study.

According to Kolowrat, those policy recommendations might include incentivizing ride-sharing, carpooling, ZipCars, mass transit, biking, walking, and moreCall of which would have the added benefit of helping the College meet its Climate Action Plan commitments for carbon reduction. As of now, the Climate Action Plan calls to deal with the carbon impact of transportation solely through carbon offsets.