Campus renewal on track

DANIEL McCABE | There were a few bumps in the road, but, by and large, McGill's $22.5 million campus renewal program got off to a good start this summer, according to Radu Juster, a capital alterations manager with the Department of Facilities Development and project manager for the repair and renovation work. Given that the downtown campus looked a little like a war zone during the summer months, the generally tidy look to the place is quite an accomplishment. "We didn't have any huge, unpleasant surprises," says Juster, but a number of complicating factors did pose some problems. McGill won't be able to renovate its roofs as quickly as it had hoped. One more thing to blame on the ice storm. As insurance companies began paying off claims to policy holders for damages done to their roofs by the storm, roofing experts found themselves swamped by job offers this summer. As a result, estimates to repair McGill's roofs were 40% higher than expected. "Nobody was in a particular hurry to come to McGill and do work on our roofs which are often very difficult to access," explains Juster. McGill will be holding off on some of the repair work in order to wait for prices to become more reasonable. "Unfortunately, that means that some of the buildings can't be done right away. We're appealing to people in those buildings to please be patient and put up with one more winter." All the work on the underground tunnels (which provide access to vital power lines and water pipes) has been completed, as has the scheduled work on McGill terraces. In the case of Burnside Hall, a plan has been developed to seriously spruce up its battered outdoor terrace -- outdoor seating will be added, a new surface will be built and green space will be increased. The makeover will begin next spring. Work on the McIntyre Medical Sciences Building proved to be more complicated than was originally thought. "At first we were going to replace all the windows and add a new aluminum curtain wall to the top floors," explains Juster. "But our consultants persuaded us that, to be really effective, we should do a full recladding of the entire tower -- everything above the sixth floor." The staircase to the Macdonald-Harrington Building is under repair as of this writing. It took longer than anticipated to get the proper building materials. Something that will have to be addressed in a new round of renovations is McGill's system of magnetic locks for the doors to many of its buildings and the security system which opens those doors in an emergency situation. The city of Montreal has reservations about how well the system operates and the University will have to review the system and update and replace some of its emergency hardware and fire alarm panels as a result. The renovations that have probably been most disruptive for the return of students are attached to a separate project that is focused on the McConnell and Macdonald engineering buildings. "It's like living at home when you're doing major renovations to your kitchen," says Professor Richard Japp, chair of the Department of Civil Engineering, which is situated in the Macdonald Building. "It's workable, but it's not very pleasant." The renovations to the buildings have posed difficulties for the start of a new academic year. Japp and his colleagues have had to delay a pair of lab courses, while the undergraduate students in his department are making do without a student lounge. "They're feeling a little homeless for the moment," says Japp. "We're lucky in the sense that most of the work that still has to be finished involves facilities that we won't really need until the winter semester." Priority has been given to classrooms and labs. Professor David Lowther, chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, says his department, located in the Macdonald Building, has been less fortunate. "We've received help from other departments -- we've been able to borrow classrooms in other buildings -- but our faculty and students have had to go hiking all over campus." "There is dust and dirt all over the place," notes Japp. "It doesn't send a good message to new students when they arrive to begin their studies and they see that the engineering faculty itself is under construction." Bob Stanley, the project manager who deals with the outside contractor working on the project, says he's sympathetic to those concerns. The contractor has missed two deadlines for the project so far, says Stanley, adding that McGill is unhappy with the slow progress. The contractor pledges to finish much of the remaining work -- on renovations to a new civil enginering lab in Macdonald and to McConnell's lobby and classrooms -- by the end of October.