UPDATED: March 6, 2019 at 1:25 a.m.

Syracuse University officials detailed ongoing and upcoming construction projects to a small group Tuesday during the first of three town halls this semester on SU infrastructure projects.

Pete Sala, vice president and chief facilities officer; Mark Hance, associate director for construction and Joe Alfieri, director of the Campus Planning, Design and Construction division, gave updates on the Barnes Center at the Arch, Schine Student Center renovations and several other campus construction and utility plans.

“This is the beginning of our communications of summer construction across campus and there will be more to come,” Hance said.

Construction of the Barnes Center for the Arch, a fitness and wellness center that is replacing the Archbold Gymnasium, is on schedule. The center is expected to open in September 2019, Hance said. Building A of the center will open in July, ahead of students returning to campus in August, he added.

Hance said throughout spring break and the week following, pedestrian traffic on the west side of Carnegie Library will be restricted as more construction is completed on the Arch. Some parking near the Physics Building will be affected, he said.

Joseph Carfi, director of parking and transit services, will work to find solutions to parking that is impacted by construction, Sala said.

Alfieri said that the SU Bookstore and Goldstein Auditorium will remain open during the Schine Student Center renovations, which are scheduled to begin in May and finish by fall 2020. The building’s east entrance, which faces Bird Library, will also remain open, he said.

The renovated building will consist of mostly open spaces with few private areas, Alfieri said. He added that the dining area will also be redone.

“Any services that aren’t student facing have been relocated out of the building, and will not return post-renovation,”he said. “So the building’s all about the students.”

Sala said any services that are not student-centered will be moved to Bird Library or the Women’s Building.

Construction on the National Veterans Resource Center is going well despite the winter weather, Alfieri said. He said steel installations on the building’s structure will be finished by next week. The roof will be completed this spring, allowing for interior work on the building to begin, he said.

The center is expected to be completed in December 2019 for a January 2020 opening, Alfieri said.

The design for the new Carrier Dome roof is complete, and the university is working with the city to get a permit for construction, Sala said. He said steel installation for the roof is scheduled to begin in fall 2019. The actual roof replacement is expected to begin in March 2020 and be completed by September of that year.

Sala said he met with a contractor Tuesday to talk about how students and pedestrian traffic will be able to move around the Dome during the construction.

As part of SU’s signage and wayfinding program, the university will also put up 45 new signs this spring and 40 more throughout the summer and into the fall, Alfieri said. A digital sign program will also be added to the SU app, he said.

“With this comes the requirement for us to have a program for managing changes in signs and new sign installations,” Alfieri said. “So when we do establish this uniformity in signs across campus, we maintain it in the future.”

Hacen also gave updates on other construction projects at the forum:

• The Burton Blatt Institute will move into Dineen Hall, and work has begun on the College of Law’s fourth floor this week for the institute’s relocation.

“It’s just going to create greater opportunity for collaboration between the College of Law and the Burton Blatt Institute,” Hacen said.

• The city of Syracuse is beginning its University Hill Bike Network Project in April. The project will establish“traffic calming measures” in the SU area.

• Masonry work will occur on the roof of Crouse College this summer. The Maxwell School for Citizenship and Public Affairs roof will also receive masonry work over the summer as part of a multi-year process that will end in 2022.

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, Vice President and Chief Facilities Officer Pete Sala was misquoted. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on March 5, 2019 at 10:59 pm

Contact India: irmiragl@syr.edu