Universities Busy with Multi-Million dollar projects

By John Wolcott

Construction activity on university campuses across the Northwest is being spurred by the challenges of keeping pace with growing enrollment, replacing aging buildings, showcasing new technologies and competing for post-graduate students, researchers and scientists.

Although budget constraints in Washington and Oregon legislatures make it increasingly difficult to finance campus facilities, universities have learned that years of patience and persistence with legislators eventually can lead to construction funding. But some educators, unable to keep their campuses competitive with such long waits for government budget funding, are using state-issued general obligation bonds to finance construction.

With numerous college and university projects always in various planning, funding or building stages, each year brings several new facilities on line and new contracts for the next wave of construction.

This year, for instance, Washington State University will finish a $44 million Plant Biosciences building on the Pullman campus in July; Central Washington University at Ellensburg opened a long-awaited $29 million music center last October; Portland State University's new $71 million engineering building will open in 2006, and the Oregon Institute of Technology in Klamath Falls awarded contracts to build a $15 million, high-tech residence hall that is also designed to be a "living and learning facility" sustained by geothermal and solar power sources.

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One of the most significant projects is WSU's Plant Biosciences facility, being built by Baugh Skanska of Beaverton, Ore., as general contractor and construction manager. Sited on the west side of Johnson Hall, the 93,000-sq.-ft. research and teaching facility designed by Seattle's Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership is the first of six buildings planned for the university's new Research and Education Complex (REC).

It will hold five stories of state-of-the-art laboratories, classrooms and administrative offices, providing more space for research programs in plant biotechnology and molecular sciences. Next year, construction will begin on a $61.5 million Biotechnology/Life Sciences building, with LMN Architects as the designer and Lydig Construction of Spokane as the GC/CM. By 2015 four more buildings will be completed on the REC site, creating one of the nation's most advanced inter-disciplinary biotech research centers.

"This facility, and the REC, will attract even more researchers and scientists, part of the university's strategic plan to expand and integrate its research facilities and teaching programs," said Vinod Ghoting, AIA, associate director of WSU's Capital Planning and Development department. "Most (older) college laboratories look much like high school labs, but this facility will provide students and researchers with full-scale research tools and modern technology, unlike the adjacent Johnson Hall, built in the 1960s."

Projects like these improve education opportunities, promote university reputations and offer contractors a variety of attractive public projects, work that is especially welcomed when the economy turns sluggish and commercial work wanes. The downside of this market is the time it takes to find funding, sometimes creating an intermittent workflow. Five of the six buildings in the REC complex, for example, have been in planning stages for years. Now that work on the first phase has begun, however, the build-out of the REC will take a decade, he said.

"Everything depends on the (state) budget. We put in our requests, pray we get the majority of them, be happy with what we get and then we do the same thing the next biennium until (eventually) we get everything we ask for," Ghoting said.

At Central Washington University in Ellensburg, the $29 million, 70,000-sq.-ft. Music Education Facility that opened last October will replace Hertz Hall, built in 1963 for a music department with 150 students. Today the music program enrollment is 260, with an increase to 326 projected by 2010. The new facility includes a 600-seat concert hall, 150-seat recital hall, 30 practice rooms, four rehearsal rooms and several classrooms and faculty studios. Lydig Construction was the contractor, with Studio Meng Strazzara the architect and engineer for the project.

"We'll use this building to market the university and attract more enrollment down the road," said Mark Anderson, CWU's director of marketing. "Across Washington there is ongoing competition and recruitment going on by public and private schools, some marketing more aggressively than others. The new music building will give us more leverage."

Aside from some private donations, most of CWU's capital funding comes from the state Legislature, Anderson said, noting that regularly presenting requests for campus improvement funding is an ongoing program that's paying off. Next up is a 228,261-sq.-ft., $40 million Student Union and Recreation Center being built by Lydig Construction. Work began last fall, heading for an April 2006 opening.

In Oregon, Portland State University's major expansion project at its downtown campus is its $71 million Northwest Center for Engineering, Science and Technology, a five-story academic and research facility being built by Lease Crutcher Lewis and due to open in 2006.

The building will house nearly 50 teaching and research laboratories, enhancing the university's ability to attract "outstanding new faculty and more students … and advancing research into more areas of biotechnology and nanotechnology," said Ernest Tipton, PSU's manager of campus planning and design.

Plans for the center include providing flexible new facilities to serve the increasing engineering enrollment at PSU and create a regional center that will also house a number of collaborative programs involving the University, Oregon Health & Science University and other institutions.

"Financing the Northwest Center was successful because of a public-private partnership," Tipton said. "There's dwindling resources for general education in the state budget, yet we've seen phenomenal enrollment growth the past five years, up 5 to 6 percent annually. In 2000 we had 19,000 students, today we have 24,000 and we're projecting 30,000 by 2012."

The mix of funding for the building included $6 million from The Massiah Foundation, $5.5 million from two private donors, $500,000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, $5 million from the city of Portland's Development Center and $26.5 million in general obligation bonds issues by the state of Oregon, plus $2 million in federal funds, among other sources.

Still in the design stage at Klamath Falls, Ore., Soderstrom Architects of Portland is designing a $15 million, multi-use "living learning center" for the campus at the Oregon Institute of Technology. The project will provide five three-story residence halls in two construction phases, with an emphasis on sustainability that will also be a focus for student studies and research. Students will be asked to learn about the building's energy efficiencies as well make their own effort to restrict energy consumption.

Soderstrom is working with Eugene's Solarc Architecture and Engineering to incorporate Klamath Falls' access to geothermal energy for heating as well as photovoltaics and other technology, creating a building that is expected to be the nation's largest "net-zero-energy" facility, said Joe Holliday, OIT's vice president of student affairs. Ninety-five percent of the campus is already heated with geothermal sources. The buildings' most prominent feature may be spiral turbines that look like moving sculptures as they spin to produce electricity.