In this architectural model, the
future visitors center is in the foreground and the
computational sciences building at right. Garland Hall is
at the top of the photo.
|
Before too long, Homewood's Garland Field will be a
really, really big hole in the ground.
And we're all going to have to find a way around
it.
This week, construction trailers and erosion control
fencing will start to appear south of Garland Hall. That's
the site of a new quadrangle that will include an
admissions office and visitors center, a computational
sciences building and a 604-space underground garage.
Next, the brick wall between Clark and Hodson halls
will come down, making way for a new road south of Garland
Hall. That road will assure the fire department emergency
access to buildings like Levering and Latrobe once the road
west of Shriver is dug up.
Then, right after Labor Day weekend, the current
Garland Field parking lot will close. Construction will
start in earnest. Starting next to Barton Hall, where the
computational sciences building will stand, and working
their way south and west, crews will spend the next four
months digging and carting out 70 to 80 dump truckloads of
dirt and debris each day — a total of 90,000 cubic
yards of earth. Excavators will need to fill about 8,000
trucks in all to finish the job.
The 30-foot-deep hole they leave behind will be
surrounded by a construction fence enclosing about 10
acres, a site stretching from Barton and Garland all the
way down to Wyman Park Drive.
That will make for some long detours for staff heading
from Garland to the Wyman Park Building for meetings, or
students on their way from Clark to the Mattin Center for a
rehearsal. It will mean additional orienteering challenges
for prospective students or concertgoers parked in the
visitors lot, which is being relocated temporarily to the
Stony Run Lot (once known as R Lot) at the corner of San
Martin and Wyman Park drives. And it will mean new
challenges for disabled pedestrians negotiating new
accessible routes.
The university's Office of Facilities and builder
Whiting-Turner Contracting will make every effort to
minimize the disruption, said Travers Nelson, the
university's project manager for what is called, for now
anyway, the South Quadrangle project.
Signs will be installed to point out the best
available paths to specific destinations, including the
handicapped-accessible routes, Nelson said. The university
will give particular attention to street signs guiding
drivers to the temporary Stony Run visitors lot and to
walkway signs directing visitors from the lot to campus
buildings.
The university will be asking the city for new
crosswalks, warning signs and rumble strips on Wyman Park
Drive to protect pedestrians, who will be crossing the
street at new places and in greater numbers. Meters will be
removed and parking prohibited on the Garland side of Wyman
Park Drive, both to keep the street clearer for pedestrians
and, near the construction entrance, to provide a staging
area for dump trucks.
"Pilings for foundation work will be drilled, not
driven, to reduce noise and vibration," Nelson said. "There
inevitably will be noise from the site, however." After
excavation is complete and the garage and buildings start
taking shape, for instance, workers will be "dropping"
formwork for concrete, a sound that will seem all too
familiar to those in the area who remember the construction
of Clark Hall.
The South Quadrangle project is scheduled for
completion in summer 2007. The three-level underground
garage, which will include 150 spaces for visitor parking,
will be topped by a grassy quad, flanked on the south by
the three-story, 28,000-square-foot admissions and visitors
center. The computational science building, a Whiting
School of Engineering building that will house an
interdisciplinary blend of faculty focused on the use of
computing in research, will flank the eastern edge of the
quad. It will stand three stories high and contain 79,000
square feet. Clark Hall, already the home for biomedical
engineering at Homewood, will stand along the western edge.
Two sites on the quad will remain open for future
development.
The project's architects are with the Boston firm of
Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott, assisted by
Baltimore engineers James Posey Associates, RKK Engineers
and Morabito Consultants.
Anyone with questions about South Quad project
construction can contact Nelson at 410-516-7862 or
tnelson@jhu.edu. Construction updates will be posted on the
Facilities Office Web site at:
www.fm.jhu.edu/home.html. Click on "projects."