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The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Master Plan Moves Forward

MICHELLE XU/THE HOYA The Healey Family Student Center, under construction in New South, is scheduled to be completed by fall.
MICHELLE XU/THE HOYA
The Healey Family Student Center, under construction in New South, is scheduled to be completed by fall.

As the academic year comes to a close, the university is preparing to advance several campus construction projects this summer, some of which will have noticeable impacts on the campus community come fall.

Preliminary work is scheduled to begin this summer for the construction of both the Northeast Triangle Residence Hall and the John R. Thompson Jr. Intercollegiate Athletic Center, as well as the conversion of Ryan and Mulledy Halls into student residences.

Construction on the Healey Family Student Center began last August and will enter its final stages this summer, with a completion date set for the beginning of the fall semester.

Currently, the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems are being installed, electrical work has begun and live wall construction has commenced. Later in the summer, hard interior finishes — such as floors, restroom fixtures and furniture — will be installed.

“By and large, a lot of the heavy demolition and some of the new construction work is finished. They’re starting to do interior finishes right now and we’re on schedule to open up in August,” Vice President for Planning and Facilities Management Robin Morey said.

Preliminary stages of the conversion of Ryan and Mulledy Halls, the former Jesuit residence, into a student residence will begin May 19. The housing materials abatement and demolition stages of construction will be completed this summer.

“There’s lead paint and asbestos in those buildings, so we have to go in there and properly abate those according to [Environmental Protection Agency] standards, and then the demolition of walls that we’re not going to use as part of the design, old utilities systems that we’re not going to use,” Morey said. “That’s just really demolition. There’s nothing exciting about that work other than that’s what you need to do in order to get the new stuff in there.”

After these regulatory processes are completed this summer, exterior construction will commence in the fall. The conversion of the residence, which will house 160 students, is scheduled to be complete by fall 2015.

The university received Old Georgetown Board concept approval for the Northeast Triangle in March and will go before the OGB for design development approval in June. If the university receives OGB approval, it will begin site utility relocation later that month, Senior University Architect Jodi Ernst said in an interview with The Hoya last month.

“The site had all of the existing utilities running underneath the footprint, so we need to relocate them underneath the new walkway, which means putting in new pipes and switching over the electrical and the sewer and the plumbing. … That’s about a four-month project,” Ernst said.

Morey said that he hopes to break ground for the Northeast Triangle in August. The residence hall is scheduled to open in fall 2016.

In order to accommodate the construction of the Northeast Triangle, which will be located south of Henle Village, pedestrian traffic will be rerouted to the east side of Reiss Science Building beginning in the fall semester. Morey said that he does not anticipate that this change will have a major impact on pedestrian traffic.

“It’s one of our most [used] pedestrian paths, but the width of the path is no different than the width of [the detour] on the east side [of Reiss]. It’s a minor inconvenience at best,” Morey said.

Although this walkway is among the most popular pedestrian paths on campus, some students agree that the detour will not pose a major inconvenience for them.

“I think that it will be slightly inconvenient, but I don’t think that it will add any more than one or two minutes to wherever you’re going,” Marla Abadilla (MSB ’17), who will be living in Henle Village next semester, said.

The construction of the Intercollegiate Athletic Center will also impact pedestrian traffic. Due to changes in the routes of the Georgetown University Transportation Shuttle buses, pedestrian traffic will be rerouted to the sidewalks closer to Wolfington Hall and the Southwest Quad, instead of going by the tennis courts, which will be removed during the construction of the IAC.

The construction of the IAC, which is expected to take about two years, will follow a similar schedule as that of the Northeast Triangle.

“We’re doing it in two phases. The first phase would be breaking ground and doing the site work and the excavation, and then the second one would be when you see it coming out of the ground,” Morey said. “We anticipate to start that in the summer, when we get board approval and all the permits.”

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  • M

    MickeyMay 16, 2014 at 11:31 pm

    Sure, Georgetown needs to promote underage drinking ON-campus and the revenues need to go back to the school (or an entity paying the school rent)… I mean, why have a pub on-campus at the Healey “Family” Student Center when the vast majority of the student body is UNDER the legal drinking age? Hypocritical of our school’s values or small interest-pork barreling–which is worse, I don’t know.

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