UMass Boston Developments | Columbia Point | Dorchester

today
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no tree on top yet
 
Boston02124 said:
today
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no tree on top yet
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Don't tell me -- If I didn't know better I think that the horizontal row of trusses crossing in front of the crane was perhaps the support frame for a "Gerbil Tube" -- perish the thought :=}
 
In the midst of a building boom, UMass Boston officials plan in the coming weeks to push ahead with a proposed revamping of the Columbia Point campus’s roadways. The university will host a public meeting next Monday at 6 p.m. at its Campus Center to update community members on campus construction and potential changes to the roads surrounding the property.

Intended to eliminate the “racetrack” feel of the campus, the complex relocation of university roads involves expanding underground utilities and the construction of a new parking garage, which will be located near the new integrated sciences complex that is now under construction.

Campus roads will reduce the number of lanes coming into and out of the university, as well as making them two-way in order to improve traffic flow. Roads in front of the Campus Center that lead to the JFK Presidential Library and Museum are slated to be rebuilt and pulled closer to the Center.

Dorothy Renaghan, the assistant vice chancellor for facilities management, said the university has tapped a construction manager, Bond Brothers, for the utility and road relocation effort.

Utilities that service the campus are currently in the upper and lower levels of the present unused garage, which was closed in 2006 after a Big Dig tunnel’s ceiling collapse killed a car passenger and raised safety concerns. The former 1,560-car garage serves as a foundation for the campus, connecting the various academic and administrative buildings.

The campus master plan calls for the closed garage to come down and be replaced with a quad the size of Harvard Yard, while underground utilities would follow the route of the university road that circles the campus. The utilities project, which will also service the building dedicated to the study of the US Senate and named for the late Edward M. Kennedy, could be completed by the end of 2015 or the beginning of 2016.

UMass officials have also been weighing the placement of a new parking garage on University Drive West, near where the rotary is.

One option would shift the road northward, with a seven-level parking facility being built adjacent to the Clark Center gymnasium, with room on the ground floor for university shipping and receiving operations and athletic team buses.

A second option calls for a nine-level garage and places it on the opposite side of University Drive West, and up against a sliver of land UMass is negotiating to lease to Boston College High School, which the high school intends to use to build a pair of baseball fields, including one that replicates Fenway Park on a smaller scale. The second option would also include a catwalk connecting the garage to the university’s service and supply building. Under both options, the garages would hold around 1,300 parking spaces.

At next Monday’s meeting, UMass officials will update community members on plans for a $110 million academic building with teaching labs, a theater, a recital hall, and a dance studio. The groundbreaking is expected to occur this fall, in the parking area known as the “north lot,” next to the Campus Center.

Officials will also likely talk about the efforts to clean up and secure the former Calf Pasture pumping station, which the university acquired in exchange for $2.1 million in scholarships for Boston Public School students. Obsolete electrical transformers were removed from the building, new fencing has been installed, and debris, trees, and shrubs have been taken out.

The university has abandoned the potentially costly idea of temporarily housing campus police in “modular structures” on the pumping station property, and instead will likely put them in the planned University Drive West garage.
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http://www.dotnews.com/2012/umass-update-public-latest-campus-plans-monday-night-meeting-will-focu
 
There's gerbil tubes everywhere on this campus. Also, UMASS Boston is really just one gigantic building with little islands of other buildings on top of it.
 
If most of the campus buildings are sitting on top of the (now-closed) parking garage, how do they plan to demolish the garage?
 
Dorothy Renaghan, the assistant vice chancellor for facilities management, said the university has tapped a construction manager, Bond Brothers, for the utility and road relocation effort.
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How did a public university award this to Bond without putting it out to bid?
 
I was hoping I would see the finished project while I'm attending school but looks like I'll graduate UMB before science building is completed. Great to see my univ to spread out its facilities.
 
Ron Newman said:
If most of the campus buildings are sitting on top of the (now-closed) parking garage, how do they plan to demolish the garage?
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Ron -- remember that under the parking garage is a hundred years of slowly deaying landfill which produces enough methane that active ventilation is required to prevent explosive mixtures from forming in the underground spaces

The good news is that the UMass Boston campus could potentially power itself with wate-derrived natural gas

The bad news-es:
1) eventually it will sink into Boston Harbor
2) in the meantime there is a possiblility that it could become the first space university -- err university in space
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
How did a public university award this to Bond without putting it out to bid?
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It seems like they have CM's on early often at Universities. The jobs still go out to bid to select GC's and other subs. The CM is usually hired by the University as the University's rep.
 
Not UMass, but in the neighborhood: does anyone know what the deal is with the giant vacant lot just south of the JFK station and north of the Columbia Shaw's?
Aerial view here: http://g.co/maps/f8e8j
 
My alma mater right there. I think they print money over there. But yet always ask me for more
 
As a current BC High student, this addition is going to address the school's biggest deficiency, the arts. Currently, BC High still carries a stigma of being exclusively a sports school, and in my opinion, the current administration is trying to change this. In addition, the placement of the building does not interfere with any of the current playing fields which is important as space is limited of course. Lastly, the BC High/UMB baseball field is going to be awesome!
 
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