Construction projects on each of the university's three campuses have recently been completed, while others are underway or in the planning process, according to Director of Project Administration and University Maintenance Rudi Pizzi.
The uphill central heating plant project that began in October to replace old tanks with ones for natural gas is nearing completion, Pizzi said. The only steps left are regrading and paving asphalt where needed - projects that could not be completed over the winter, but that are restarting now.
The $2.2 million project has involved a large team composed of facilities staff, project administratiors and outside contractors, including a construction manager and mechanical and environmental engineers, Pizzi explained. He said the project is one of many that are part of a larger goal of making Tufts more energy efficient.
"We're embarking right now on an energy master plan that's going to have a significant amount of work that will be done to continue to make us not only sustainable, but also energy efficient," he said.
Part of the plan also involves the ongoing renovations that began in Aug. 2013 at the 100-year-old former industrial warehouse property at 574 Boston Ave. The 100,000 square-foot space is being re-appropriated by the university for academic use, Strategic Capital Programs Director Barbara Stein said.
The departments of physics, community health, occupational therapy and child development, as well as the human factors specialty of engineering, will move into the building when it is completed in Feb. or March of 2015. The buildings those departments currently inhabit will either be decommissioned or occupied by others, Stein said.
"[There will be a] variety of labs and a lot of offices," she said. "The idea for the building is to use space in more efficient ways. We're replacing all the windows to try and get tons of natural light to all the working spaces."
Also underway are plans for the new science and technology center to be located behind Anderson and Robinson Halls in what is currently a parking lot, Stein said. The 574 Boston Ave. project will add 60 parking spaces that will make up for the loss of the lot, she said.
"The biggest thing that we're working on is the science center," Pizzi said. "That's probably the most significant project we have going on [at] all three campuses."
According to Stein, the building, which is still in the early planning stages, will have 80,000 square feet of new teaching space and research labs. She said the university hopes to have the project completed by mid-2017.
"There were a lot of sites studied on campus for the new building as part of the master planning effort," Stein said. "That was the site that was finally selected, and I think it's because [it is] located kind of at the beginning of what we call the 'science and technology corridor.' There are other science and engineering buildings nearby so it sort of helped to cluster the science buildings."
Other significant projects include the completion of a new generator that will power the entire animal hospital on the Grafton campus, and the completion of renovations to both the space and technological equipment in the data center at the Tufts Administration Building.
"That was a big project that has now upgraded all of our IT systems in the data center," Pizzi said. "The space was renovated and it was all technological as well. [It] took about a year."
A new small lab was also recently completed at 200 Boston Ave., and another one in that space is to be completed in mid-May, Pizzi said.
Pizzi said that there are also plans underway to install solar panels on the Grafton campus and on Dowling Hall on the Medford/Somerville campus.
"These solar projects are quite different from traditional campus construction projects," Director of Facilities Technical Services and Tufts Energy Manager Betsy Isenstein told the Daily in an email.
The installation of solar panels on Dowling Hall was delayed due to the harsh weather this winter, but electrical work on the project is scheduled to begin this week, Isenstein said. The university will partner with a solar company to install the panels, a process which will take around three weeks in total, but is dependent on the weather, she added.
"Our solar partner will own and operate the system," she said. "Tufts will purchase the solar electricity output through a power purchase agreement. The cost of the installation is borne by the solar developer, so a Tufts project budget is unnecessary."
