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09/13/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 09/14/2024 03:23

Fall’s 14 Biggest BU Construction Projects: Women’s Hockey Locker Room, SAO Moves into the GSU, and the New Lavender House, and More

Fall's 14 Biggest BU Construction Projects: Women's Hockey Locker Room, SAO Moves into the GSU, and the New Lavender House, and More

Capital improvements visible across the Charles River and Medical Campuses

A timelapse of the hoisting of the new Daktronics video board in Walter Brown Arena. Video courtesy of BU Athletics

Campus & Facilities

Fall's 14 Biggest BU Construction Projects: Women's Hockey Locker Room, SAO Moves into the GSU, and the New Lavender House, and More

Capital improvements visible across the Charles River and Medical Campuses

September 13, 2024
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Jill Cardella was a top player and eventual cocaptain of the BU Terriers women's ice hockey team. Her second home for four years was Walter Brown Arena, which was built in 1971 and seats almost 4,000 people. It is also one of the only facilities in the country solely dedicated to women's ice hockey. But Boston University's 53-year-old arena is starting to show its age, says Cardella (COM'13, MET'16), who is today the assistant athletic director of capital planning and facilities operations for BU Athletics.

Last December, BU Athletics announced that Walter Brown Arena would have the biggest renovation to any facility in the department's history, including a state-of-the-art locker room and scoreboard, and be a huge upgrade for the women's ice hockey team. Work on the project started this summer, with plans to finish in December.

"I'm really excited to see this project happen," she says. "Anyone I've brought through the space is super impressed, just at the space and the size, compared to what the women had previously."

The new women's hockey suite is just one of many construction projects on the Charles River and Medical Campuses that started this summer and will continue this fall. Overseen by the folks in Campus Planning & Operations (CPO), these dozens of projects include new builds, renovations, and classroom and technology upgrades.

Colleen McGinty, assistant vice president for annual capital projects, says CPO has chipped away at BU Athletics' long-term master plan for a few years. This summer, two big projects were the women's hockey space and the renovation of the men's basketball locker room.

McGinty has an encyclopedic knowledge of her team's list of completed and ongoing projects-from a new brownstone house for LGBTQIA+ students to an important HVAC upgrade on the Medical Campus, in addition to lab renovations, new faculty spaces, and sprinkler and fire alarm upgrades. She compares her team's planning to setting up and toppling dominoes: they line up projects years in advance and then do the work in stages. "It seemed way busier to us this summer," she says.

This year's summer and fall construction projects are in addition to the daily upkeep required to maintain BU's more than 300 buildings and grounds, spread over three urban campuses. Here are 13 other campus construction projects, both ongoing or completed, worth noting. Find the complete list here.

Center for Brain Recovery
111 Cummington Mall

With the sale of 677 Beacon Street two years ago, CPO and the Office of the Provost needed to find space for neuroscientists from Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences and the College of Arts and Sciences. Over the last nine months, 17,000 square feet at 111 Cummington Street was renovated and the team moved in in August. McGinty describes it as a full gut rehab of most of the second floor, with new group lab space and sound booths.

Lavender House
165 Bay State Rd.

BU recently purchased this brownstone and swiftly renovated it to become the new Lavender House, a living-learning community for LGBTQIA+ folks and their allies. The brownstone houses 20 residents (including a resident assistant) and consists of single and double rooms, two lounges, a community kitchen and laundry area, and all-gender bathroom and shower suites. In their renovation, CPO added central air (a first for any of the brownstones on Bay State Road), electric heating, and LED lighting. "It's a very sustainable building," McGinty says.

Questrom School of Business/Executive Offices
595 Commonwealth Ave. / 1 Silber Way

This fall project replaces the roof on the building that houses the Questrom School of Business, Development & Alumni Relations, and the Office of the President. There are cranes in the adjacent alleyway.

College of Arts & Sciences
685 Commonwealth Ave.

There were eight existing registrar classrooms on the second floor that were resized.

Warren Towers Dining Room
700 Commonwealth Ave.

A new commercial dishwasher was installed at Warren Towers. This dining facility serves over a million meals every year to more than 1,750 undergrads who live in the building's three towers.

IDG Capital Student Innovation Center and Robotics & Autonomous Systems Teaching and Innovation Center (RASTIC)
730 Commonwealth Ave.

Now the home of these two innovation and robotics labs, for years 730 Commonwealth Ave. housed a RadioShack (remember those!?) and CVS. Two BU centers moved in, but the accessible entrance was at the back of the building and not on Commonwealth Avenue. McGinty's team worked this summer to correct that.

A new ramp now leads into the building, and then you can turn either right or left to enter RASTIC or the IDG space (which also has some new branding and signage).

Student Activities Office
775 Commonwealth Ave.

SAO's offices, formerly on University Road in BU Academy, were recently moved into the basement of the George Sherman Union, into the old Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground space, which is now over at 808 Commonwealth Ave. This move had two benefits: it got SAO under the roof of the Dean of Students and allowed BUA more space to expand, McGinty says. While the new suite is primarily offices for SAO staff, it also has some meeting space for student groups.

College of Communication Studio
808 Commonwealth Ave.

COM wanted to expand its Babcock Studios space (at 300 Babcock St.), so this fall CPO will build out four new studios on the fifth floor of 808 Commonwealth Ave. The plan is for COM to then vacate the Babcock Street space.

Boston University Campus Store
910 Commonwealth Ave.

BU's bookstore, formerly called Barnes & Noble at Boston University, is now officially the Boston University Campus Store. This summer, CPO helped physically refresh the space and install new signage.

Case Gym and Case Center
285 Babcock St.

The men's basketball program received a big facility upgrade this summer, with a new locker room, recovery and nutrition areas, and a central lounge. The men's basketball locker room is essentially going into what was the old wrestling room in the Case Center (the varsity wrestling team was disbanded in 2014). There is also a renovation of a video room that's available to both the men's and women's basketball teams.

Walter Brown Arena
285 Babcock St.

The new women's hockey suite consists of a new locker room, a lounge for the student-athletes, and recovery, study, and nutrition areas. Cardella describes it as the team's "home," and so it was important to Athletics that the space be a resource where they can have their needs met daily.

One of the locker room's cool features is the athletes' stalls, which are individually mechanically ventilated through the back of the locker. The recovery area has large Normatec compression boots, which can aid in faster recovery for the athletes as they sit to hang out or study.

"As a department, we want the women to have just as good of a space as the men have," Cardella says. "Ultimately, we want our student-athletes to have the best experience and spaces as we can and to make them something that is on par with a lot of the other top programs in the country. And, obviously, hockey is important at a place like BU."

But that's not all that is happening at Walter Brown. CPO helped install new signage and branding to tell the history of the women's hockey team, a new glass railing, and a new scoreboard. Previously, there was a standard four-sided metal scoreboard without a digital screen. This new iteration has a Daktronics video board with a fixed digital board.

Women's team and club sports can still practice in Walter Brown during this time, but the space is not normally open to the public. The goal is for the project to be finished by the start of the 2025 Beanpot Tournament in January.

BU Softball Field (Malvern Field)
89 Ashford St.

This fall, this Boston softball field will become an artificial turf field. "When it rained, the old grass field had terrible drainage and was really difficult to play on," McGinty says.

New HVAC equipment
700 Albany St.

This two-year project added new HVAC equipment to the roof of 700 Albany St., a large lab space on the Medical Campus. This work involved a major replacement of the building's mechanical systems, including air handlers and air distribution design. "Our understanding was, at one time, the building was the biggest energy user in the city of Boston," McGinty says. And so now, by putting in more efficient and effective mechanical systems, this building is much more sustainable.

Clinical Skills and Simulation Center
72 East Concord St.

This project involves a full gut rehab of the sixth floor of the Medical Campus' L Building for the Clinical Skills and Simulation Center, currently in the Evans Building. In the center, students get experience dealing with and "treating" patient-actors as well as high-tech, full-body simulators. "But in order to prepare for that, we had to do a bunch of what we call 'domino projects,'" McGinty says. This involved working with the Goldman School of Dental Medicine and relocating several of their researchers in different stages to free up space.

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