Summer is a busy construction time on campus, and this year was no exception. Here are updates on four of the University’s most visible projects: the new home for the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, the decade-long renovation of the 65-year-old Firestone Library, the $330 million arts-and-transit project, and the Lakeside graduate-housing complex.
Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment: The outlines of the Andlinger Center have risen from the large excavation area at the corner of Prospect Avenue and Olden Street. The three-story facility will include engineering labs, offices, and a lecture hall and will connect to Bowen Hall and the E-Quad. Completion is scheduled for fall 2015.
Firestone Library: While most of the renovations are taking place indoors, the exterior has been sheathed in scaffolding for masonry repairs and the replacement of windows. A new circulation desk was to be completed by the start of classes, and construction of a third-floor reading room — a signature space — will be part of work through the winter.
Arts-and-transit project: Riders will be using a temporary Dinky station and platform until the new station is completed in about a year. The Dinky’s last trip to the old station, about 1,200 feet to the north, was Aug. 24. Structures along Alexander Street were demolished to make way for the arts-and-transit buildings and a new access road to the West parking garage. The project is scheduled for completion in 2017.
Lakeside graduate housing: A 500-vehicle parking garage has been erected, and steelwork is going up for the first of 14 residential buildings that will house 715 grad students and their family members on the former site of the Hibben and Magie apartments. More than half of the 200 geothermal wells that will provide heating and cooling for the complex have been drilled. The project is scheduled to open in the summer of 2014.