AMHERST — Building and planning continues at the University of Massachusetts, which celebrated the opening of the new Commonwealth College dorm/classroom building and the new science center this fall.
Campus Planning Director Dennis Swinford provided a campus master plan update last week, highlighting the accomplishments as well as the new buildings on the horizon. He said the $95 million, 171,500-square-foot new classroom building under construction is on schedule to open in the fall. Three new buildings are in the design phase
Among the new buildings is the Integrated Design Building, which would allow the Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning department and the Architecture + Design and Building Construction Technology programs to be moved into one building. “It will make it a unique facility,” Swinford said. Groundbreaking on the approximately $50 million building is slated next year, with a 2017 opening projected, he said.
The South College will be renovated at an estimated cost of $38 million, and a new building will go in behind the college to house the humanities and fine arts departments. Many of the occupants of the building are now in Bartlett, which is slated to be razed once the new building is built. The plan “secures South College's future,” he said.
The Hills building also will be torn down. Hills and Bartlett were built in the 1960s. “It would be a little more expensive to renovate them” than to build a new building, Swinford said.
Also in the works is a new $85 million physical sciences building, a 350,000 square-foot building that will house chemistry and physic labs. Swinford said the state is paying the building's cost.
The former Marks Meadow School will be gutted and converted into office space for the College of Education. “It’s a really important project for them and us,” Swinford said. He expects that building to be ready for occupancy in 2016.
He said there are no plans to do anything right now with North Pleasant Street. In the past, people have talked about making it a pedestrian only space. “We continue to keep that conversation alive,” he said. He said UMass would like work with the town to redesign it “to make it more pedestrian friendly and safe.” He said the corridor now is “the spine of our transportation system.
“We’d love to be able to redesign it with better sidewalks and crosswalks,” he said.
The Basketball Champions Center and the Massachusetts Football Performance Center projects, launched this summer, should be ready in 2014, he said.
The university, in an agreement with the Massachusetts Environmental Protection Agency, is committed to providing campus planning updates annually, he said.
“I really do think it’s an exciting a time. It’s an era, and we will look back on (and say) there was a lot of good things happening,” Swinford said.
Related:
» UMass Amherst campus planning page
