Renovation leads Rutgers' $98.5M facilities wish list
When it asks for its piece of the state funding pie, Rutgers University's facilities wish list will be heavy on renovation.
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When it asks for its piece of the state funding pie, Rutgers University's facilities wish list will be heavy on renovation.
The university's board of governors has scheduled a special meeting Thursday to sign off on a slew of projects for which it will seek $98.5 million in state funding.
New Jersey has prepared a $180 million round of bond funding, a continuation of a pot that in 2013 allocated more than $1.3 billion to higher education construction and infrastructure projects.
That money came from several sources, including a 2012 bond referendum authorizing $750 million.
"These are renovations that need to happen. We absolutely need these jobs to move forward," said Antonio Calcado, who heads Rutgers' facilities and operations. "This is an opportunity to advance them quicker, because they are ready to go, so it's just a good opportunity for us, kind of fortuitous."
Only one of the Rutgers projects, on the Camden campus, is new construction: an addition to the Writers House that was opened in December. The $4.5 million Writers House renovation project itself was part of the first round of state funding; Rutgers is now seeking to expand it.
That addition, somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 square feet, would include office space, giving Rutgers-Camden the ability to move faculty out of the aging Armitage Hall.
The other Rutgers-Camden proposal is to renovate the Artis Building, which last was used as administrative offices but is empty. A revamped space would house the school's flagship Childhood Studies department.
Renovation to the Artis Building is one of several projects the university has pursued in recent years, only to find itself hampered by lack of funds.
"You kind of struggle to be able to wait until you can cobble the dollars together, or we put together, at some point in the future, a larger bond issue down the road," Calcado said. The state funding would be a way around that.
The Artis renovation is the smallest project, seeking $3.5 million; the largest application is $35 million to renovate an administrative services building on the Busch campus at New Brunswick.
Another New Brunswick project would renovate the Douglass Campus' Hickman Hall, Calcado said. Renovation would include replacing the building's 35-year-old air-conditioning system, he said, adding with a laugh: "You have good heating in the summer and pretty good cooling in the winter."
Rutgers is seeking state money for renovation of Rutgers-Newark's Olson Hall and John Cotton Dana Library, and two Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences spaces.
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