East Campus Construction Commences

Eight years of brainstorming and innovating, strategizing and negotiating have come to this: Faculty and staff are packing up in Piez Hall as the college’s next series of construction projects prepares to launch in earnest.

The shorthand for this $110 million to $120 million phase of SUNY Oswego’s evolution is “the sciences complex.” But it is just part of the logistical web campus planners have spun for all the work on the eastern end of campus.

In addition to the science upgrade, the School of Education's Park and Wilber halls will be renovated and Sheldon Hall will get a facelift. Also, Rice Creek Field Station reconstruction is in the planning stages.

“This major project —sciences and education—is another example of SUNY Oswego’s strength in conceptualizing and then planning what it takes to be a frontrunner in higher education,” said Susan Camp, Campus Concept Committee co-chair.  “We have capitalized on the five-year capital planning that was afforded us through New York state and are respected in SUNY for our planning and what we have accomplished.”

An estimated three years of sciences construction will start after Commencement May 15. The project will give rise to an innovative four-story structure to wrap around part of Piez Hall — more than a quarter-million square feet in all.

The final piece of that work will be the demolition and salvage of Snygg Hall in 2013 or '14. Associate Vice President for Facilities Tom Simmonds '84, M '88 acknowledged it’s difficult for some faculty and alumni to part with a building, even in the name of progress.

“I think it’s important to remember that we’re not only moving the people, but we’re moving the spirit and history of Snygg, too,” he said.

The School of Education work will follow over the next year. All told, the east campus series of projects will cost about $170 million, to be paid through the SUNY Construction Fund and its ability to bond.

Just to prepare the east campus site, workers will move miles of pipes and wires, drive thick metal sheets into the ground to protect Snygg Hall’s foundation, gut Piez Hall, bulldoze the new building’s footprint and raise a fence around the site, build a new walkway, reroute vehicle traffic, shift parking lots and more.

The commuter lot -- 145 spaces -- between Snygg and Sheldon halls will give way to drilling of a geothermal field, whose 252 holes, each about 375 feet deep, will provide a natural heat sink for cooling and heating the sciences complex.

The geothermal project is just part of the college’s effort to build the science complex to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, gold standards. To be certified, the project must include sustainable design and energy generation and consumption. The building, for example, also will incorporate a photovoltaic solar-to-electric array and use state-of-the-sustainable-art construction materials.

— Jeff Rea ’71

PHOTO CAPTION:
The “sciences complex” is at the center of the college’s $170 million east campus construction plan that begins this month.



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