"This infrastructure work enables us to move forward on the comprehensive residential plan," said Director of Facilities Planning and Management Jim Brassord, who also serves as the overall project manager for the residential housing plan. "It also solves a host of issues related to those underground utilities, such as age obsolescence and issues relative to a capacity that has been overextended."
The comprehensive residential plan will include the replacement of James and Stearns Halls with new dorms, the renovation of the Pratt Geology building and a new dorm on the site of what is currently Milliken Dormitory. To ensure that the new buildings are functional upon completion of construction, utility capacity must be enhanced immediately.
"Clearly, the infrastructure project is going to affect the timetable for the renovation and the building of the dorms on the Quad," said Dean of Students Ben Lieber. "It's a kind of chain of dominoes, where one thing follows necessarily after another."
While basic utility services have been uninterrupted thus far, renovations are necessary to meet increasing demands on capacity that will be brought about by the extensive renovation projects sweeping the campus in the following years.
"We are currently tapping the full capacity of our electrical distribution system," said Brassord. "We have been able to maintain service to the campus constituency; however, a new system will allow us to create additional capacity to ensure the long-term viability of the systems."
While the infrastructure work is expected to have only a limited effect on the academic year, departments and programs with important summer activities will face disruptions.
The Office of Admission, in particular, will have to adjust to the construction. Tours given to prospective students will probably be rerouted and admission officers will be faced with the comprehensive task of explaining the housing plans to an incoming class that will not benefit from it," according to Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Tom Parker.
"We know that students see our housing as being significantly substandard," said Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Tom Parker. "Once the project is done, it will be a heck of a lot more comfortable to bring people into newer dormitories than James and Stearns, which are frankly not impressive."
"So, while it's going to be disruptive, at this point in our history it is absolutely necessary for remaining competitive with other institutions, as well as providing a suitable learning environment," Parker added.
The summer utilities project will most directly disrupt various commercial summer camps, conferences and other activities that the College hosts over the summer.
"We're making every effort to accommodate the groups that have a history with us, but we are going to have to turn away other groups, and in fact we already have," said Summer Programs Coordinator Irene Berwick. "We can't have someone come here and be sleeping in a dorm where there is banging outside of their room; it's worse to have someone here and have them suffer from the situation than to have them just not be here at all."
The College will also probably have to eliminate a substantial number of the 30 to 40 programs it hosts each summer, cutting into profits that typically exceed $500,000, according to Berwick. Due to this loss of revenue, the summer employment of the janitorial service, food service and other departments may also be endangered. To limit job loss, the College intends to continue as many of the programs as possible.
"Summer programs always live with construction; this is the story of our life," said Berwick. "This is worse, but we always have to deal with something, and every college in the country does the same thing. We're hoping that this summer will be the worst and that in the subsequent summers the work will be more localized."
Using funds allocated by the trustees as part of the project budget for the changes planned for the Quad, the College has engaged the services of BBH Engineers, a consulting engineering firm based in Hartford, Conn., to plan and design the infrastructure work.
The initial infrastructure project is expected to begin in June and be completed prior to the beginning of the 2002-03 school year. A series of future projects are expected over ensuing summers; however, none are expected to stretch into the school year.
"To a certain extent the work that we're doing is invasive and will require excavation of a few key focal points," said Brassord. "Because of that, it will take some time for the landscape to be restored, but there's tremendous sensitivity on the part of the engineer and my office as to aesthetics."
Brassord also explained that, though the work done this summer will be extensive, there should not be a highly noticeable difference upon its completion. "Our goal is to have this project be transparent to the College community after the work is complete," he said.
The cost of the project has not yet been determined, as the hiring of a firm to oversee construction and implementation of the plan is still in the interview phase.
According to Brassord, the College is taking the opportunity presented by the comprehensive project to improve and update antiquated services, some of which are as much as 40 years old.
"My understanding is that it absolutely would have happened anyway, but this gives us a chance to do it in one fell swoop," said Lieber. "It really is a very large undertaking in a short amount of time, and we have to do it to get the rest of the project moving."