With winter break approaching and fewer day-today tasks to attend to, Keene State’s facilities team is looking to enhance certain campus buildings come spring semester.
Colin Burdick, the construction clerk of the works, said minor work would be done on the Redfern Arts Center to finish bringing the building up to code. “From a life safety perspective, we met the needs of what the state required us to fix, so buildings got an. all-new fire alarm system, all new sprinkler system all compliant to new codes, new exit signs,” Burdick said. “We do have an outstanding issue with the Alumni Recital Hall … So we’ve got a little bit of additional sprinkler work to do in there.”
Burdick said that overall the Redfern project was a success. “We came in very much under budget, so much so that we’re able to upgrade the bathrooms this winter, so the finishes in the bathrooms are getting redone which has been a deferred maintenance piece for quite a few years now,” he explained.
In terms of Holloway Hall’s bathrooms, Burdick said progress will continue being made.
“The end-of-hall bathrooms where the singles [are], the group bathrooms, we’re going to redo those, there’s three of them we’re going to do,” he said.
Additionally, Burdick said upgrades to classrooms would continue.
“Furniture, paint stuff that wasn’t able to get done over the summer, hit a couple classrooms with paint and new carpet,” he explained.
With more long-term projects in the works, Burdick said it is hard to give a timeline in the early stages, “The three projects we have in the planning stage right now are the master plan, so our ten-year master plan … The Elliot [Hall] renovation, we should be done with the programming piece in about February … Carle Hall lobby renovations, we’re looking to get a CM [construction manager] on board early in the new year working with our design team so that’s moving along pretty well.”
Burdick said the aim with Carle is to begin work on the lobby over the summer of 2024.
The Elliot Hall renovations were the only project that deviated from the original planned timeline, which Burdick said had to do with an elongated design period.
“All of 2024 will be the design, so we’ll kick off construction in 2025, whereas I think we were [originally] trying to get construction started for next summer,” he said. “We feel more comfortable that it’s not going to be a rushed project.”
As for Antioch University’s building space, where Monadnock and Randall Hall once stood, Vice President for Finance and Administration Nathalie Houder said the college remains in the due diligence phase of negotiations.
“They’re doing their due diligence on the land, they’re developing design plans for the building they’re going to put there, and how they’re going to renovate Blake House, we’re doing due diligence to make sure, still, that Antioch is the partner we want from a financial perspective but I don’t see any issues there,” Houder said.
A Nov. 17 campus-wide email sent by Houder detailed that the fencing that surrounded the plot of land would be taken down that same day.
“We hope to have construction starting next summer, so completion would be the following year,” Houder said of the project.
Another space on campus the college is looking to utilize is where the Bushnell Apartments once stood. The project, known as “Bushnell Reimagined” looks to transform the vacant land into a multi-use green space, according to Houder.
“We don’t want it to be so tight that people don’t feel like they can sit down when they’re walking by… It’s a great space for people to gather,” Houder said. Houder presented a basic design concept to Student Government’s Nov. 28 meeting which depicted the space with a flexible concrete-like foundation walkway running through it that acts as an evolving space.
“You can have presentations and gatherings and music and students can have that outdoor gathering space that we were told from feedback, both from the campus, as well as our utilization study, that we really needed more space for students to collaborate and ge together,” she explained.
“Until we get more feedback and see how this space is being used and how people want to use it, we have no design plans that are in process,” Houder said.
Nathan Hope can be contacted at
nhope@kscequinox.com
