The University recently hosted two meetings for its neighbors, and the topic of conversation was something at the forefront of the minds of many in and around the WUSTL community — construction.
The meetings on May 3 and May 7 in Brookings Hall, Room 300, featured Ralph Thaman, associate vice chancellor of facilities, planning and management, discussing the University’s construction plans for the summer and early fall.
Work on the new Liggett House — part of the Phase IV Housing project on the South 40 — is nearing completion. The residence hall, just north of the Wohl Parking Garage, will be occupied in August. New Liggett will form a residential college with Koenig House, which was completed last year. Old Liggett House is slated for removal.
Plans for the University Center are reaching fruition. But before it goes up, construction will begin on the underground parking garage.
Garage construction is slated to begin June 1, and there will be trucks hauling dirt away from 7:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Monday-Saturday all summer. In September, the number of trucks will be reduced, and the plan is for the entire hole to be dug by October.
The trucks will haul the dirt away by heading east on Forsyth, then south on Skinker to Interstate 64 (Highway 40).
The three-level garage will go where Prince Hall currently stands, will provide space for more than 500 cars and will be connected to the University Center by two elevators.
The University Center will be built on top of this garage. When complete, the center will house The Career Center, almost all student media (WUTV, KWUR, Hatchet, Student Life), food service, the event services office, graduate school activities space and meeting rooms.
The center will feature a grand hall as large, or slightly larger, than Holmes Lounge.
One of the larger projects to be undertaken is the rerouting of utility lines in the southwestern portion of the Hilltop Campus. Most of the utilities for the South 40 run beneath Prince Hall — including telecommunications, water, sewer and electrical substations.
All of that will be rerouted under existing sidewalks so future construction doesn’t go on top of the utilities.
Originally designed with expansion in mind, the Snow Way Garage will expand west. The two buildings on the west side of the garage will be torn down to make way for the addition, which will provide 290 parking spaces.
The two buildings next to the current garage were originally fraternity houses. New fraternity houses were built in The Village and the buildings are currently used as residence halls. The Snow Way Garage was designed so that it could be expanded and the residence halls would have to be removed.
The extension of the garage will have all flat floors — the ramps are all in the existing structure.
Construction of the new Social Sciences/School of Law building has been delayed from a June start to a September start. The building will be located east of the Athletic Complex and south of the law school, just west of the green space.
The building is expected to be complete and occupied about two years after the groundbreaking.
Because of the new building, two tennis courts will be removed — the remaining six tennis courts will be renovated this summer — and some parking spaces will be lost. But some of the lot just to the east of the Athletic Complex will be retained, with access between the new building and the north side of Francis Field.
The Psychology Building was also designed with future expansion in mind, and the future is now. All of the shell space in the existing structure had been outfitted, and the need for more space arose.
The nearly complete addition to the west side of the building will provide more office and lab space.
The Kemper Art Museum and Walker Hall, part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, will be completed in the summer, with move-in in the late summer. The museum will re-open in early fall.
Improvements are planned for two intersections to help alleviate the bottleneck problems on Forsyth Boulevard.
First, a dedicated left-turn lane from Forsyth onto Big Bend Boulevard (turning south) will be added.
And in the other direction, a dedicated right-turn lane will be added at the intersection of Forsyth and Skinker Boulevard, again turning south.
Plans call for the next new residence hall to be built on the parking lot near Throop Drive and Forest Park Parkway, just east of the Millbrook Apartments.
Over the next several years, the Millbrook Apartment buildings will be replaced with residence halls that are comparable to The Village.
The project is in the planning stage and construction will not begin before spring 2007.