Maxwell Student Union construction to go into 2003

Renovation of Maxwell Student Union will upgrade facilities and improve the look of a building many consider the ugliest on campus.

The current construction involves expansion and renovation of the Hancock Street side of the building, said John Webb, structural superintendent of the Office of Facilities Planning.

“We are adding four new offices and a new conference room downstairs,” said Webb. “We are also reconfiguring and upgrading existing offices in that area. Upstairs we are adding on to the dining hall, but it will have a partition. It can be one large banquet room or, with the folding partitions, it can be two smaller rooms. If they are not booked for seminars, they can be used for overflow for students. We are also adding men’s and women’s restrooms in the dining hall.”

Cosmetic improvements and a new second floor entrance are being added to the building.

“Starting from Chick-fil-A, we’ll have a series of steps going up to the entrance,” said Webb. “It will be handicap accessible and there will be a walkway that connects around the building to the walkway in front of the programmable sign. We’ll have banner poles along the side of the
building and aluminum sunshades over the windows.”

Construction required the closing of some parking spaces on Hancock
Street and has added to the parking headaches.

“A lot of people have asked why we blocked off the parking spaces,” said Webb. “I had to give my contractors somewhere to park. Also, we are adding 3,400 square feet to the side of MSU, and they gave me nowhere to lay material. We’ve got steel columns, blocks, brick, mortar, rebar, metal decking, cast stone, roofing material, sheetrock and metal studs, and I don’t have anywhere to store it. We are having to bring everything from a block and a half away, a piece at a time. What you see inside that orange fence is our whole working space, which is not much.”

Plans for the project were completed in Oct. 2001, but there was a delay in starting.

“We had some problems early on with DOT [Department of Transportation] permits,” said Webb. “We had to relocate an electrical duct bank, and we had to get a DOT permit to allow us to block the parking spaces on Hancock Street. I would have liked to have started in February or March, but we didn’t actually start work until June.”

Since construction began, the project has been running on schedule.

“Demolition work on the exterior is about 98 percent complete,” said Webb. “The rest of this month, we’ll be doing excavation. In November and December we’ll have footings and foundation walls poured. In January we hope to start erecting steel. In January and February all the steel should be erected, and we’ll start drywall in March. We’ll be putting in mechanical and electrical systems in March, April and May. We’re shooting for a June (2003) deadline to finish the job.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 4 2002. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry