New places, new spaces
By Dennis Chaptman Photos by Jeff Miller
Campus has been alive with the sights and sounds of new construction, as crews work on projects ranging from a West Campus parking garage, to a power plant, to a renovated Chamberlin Hall and a new lakeside Crew House.
Landscaping and finishing touches are being applied to 80-year-old Chamberlin Hall as part of a $22.4 million renovation expected for completion in late November. The former home to the pharmacy school will now house the Physics Department.
Work also continues on an $18 million, 1,285-stall parking garage at Lot 76, near the A.C. Nielsen Tennis Stadium, which is expected to be completed by fall 2005.
Work is also running on schedule on the West Campus Cogeneration Facility at Observatory Drive and Walnut Street, a $180 million project that is a partnership among the university, Madison Gas and Electric, and the state. The plant will serve the campus and the city, and is expected to be finished by mid-2005.
The $8.5 million Crew House at the foot of Babcock Drive is expected to be finished in December, and a $27 million addition to the Biotechnology Center/Genetics Building on Henry Mall has just been completed.
The Health Sciences Learning Center, a $55 million classroom building that serves the nursing, medical and pharmacy schools, also was completed last spring.
Crews are clearing the way for another major project, as workers tear down E.B. Fred Hall and its outdated microbiology labs. In its place will rise a $104 million Microbial Sciences Building.
Crews continue demolition of E.B. Fred Hall to make way for construction of a new Microbial Sciences Building. Construction on the $104 million project is expected to begin this fall, with the 330,000-square-foot building opening its doors in spring 2007.
Balancing more than 100 feet in the air, workers, protected by harnesses, erect steel framework above the chilled water hall at the 150-megawatt West Campus Cogeneration Facility. In the background is one of four cooling-fan assemblies that will be used to reject heat from the chilled-water process. The fans measure some 11 feet in diameter.
In a renovated classroom in Chamberlin Hall, dome-shaped hubs are spaced apart every few seats, providing students with electrical outlets and an Ethernet connection for Internet access. In the background, a worker begins cleaning the room while final electrical work is completed.
A worker uses an arc welder to install a metal railing on the sides of rowing tanks in the new Crew House, currently under construction. The railings eventually will hold mirrors, allowing crew athletes to observe their form while rowing.
People study at tables positioned along a large bank of windows at the Ebling Library in the new Health Sciences Learning Center. The center now serves as the educational hub for all health-sciences disciplines — medical, nursing and pharmacy, as well as physical therapy, physician assistant and clinical laboratory science — on campus. Unifying the disciplines even more, the staffs and collections of three health-sciences libraries — Middleton, Powers and Weston — were consolidated in the new Ebling Library, which extends through three floors on the northern crescent-shaped section of the $55 million building.