President, provost stay in College Hall

The offices of President Sheldon Hackney and Provost Michael Aiken, which had been scheduled for relocation to the Mellon Bank Building this month, will remain in College Hall for at least another half year, administrators said this week. The delay stems from the University's decision to carry out a series of mechanical and architectural improvements at the Mellon site before relocating the two offices, according to Bill Wilkinson, a project manager at Physical Plant. In order to spruce up the space and create a more functional floor plan, he said workers would spend the fall rearranging partition walls, putting in a new ceiling and changing the lighting -- what he calls "fitting out" the new offices. He said the work should be finished in time for both offices to move in by the end of the calendar year. The Mellon building, located at the corner of 36th and Walnut streets, was selected in part because of its central location to campus. Following the move, the two offices will occupy the fourth and fifth floors of the building for approximately two to three years while College Hall renovations are completed. The postponement will slow progress on the College Hall renovation project, but Wilkinson said the alternative -- paying contractors "premium" rates to get the Mellon building work done by the end of the summer -- would have cost too much. "The extra cost [of delaying the move] is only what the rate of inflation is," he said. "There is no other loss. The cost of speed-up at the Mellon building far exceeded what that delay cost would be." Another reason for fixing up the Mellon site now, according to Wilkinson, is that the building is currently half empty. That allows contractors to do mechanical and electrical work that becomes "very expensive and difficult" when the building is occupied, he said. But he added that if work at the Mellon site takes much longer than expected, both the president and provost, along with their immediate staff, might first have to relocate within College Hall before later moving to the Mellon building. Their offices, now located in the northern end of College Hall facing College Green, lie directly beneath room 200. In order for workers to perform much needed repairs in the large lecture hall, the space beneath the room must be vacated. The key factor, according to Wilkinson, is how much preparation room 200 will require before the project begins. The longer the initial stages of the project take, he said, the less likely a relocation of administrators within College Hall becomes. Staff members from both offices said this week that they were aware of the move out delay. Several, however, expressed alarm at the prospect of having to move elsewhere within College Hall, only to be uprooted again in the winter. Wilkinson cautioned that the need for a multiple move, which he described as "a possibility," hinged on both the speed with which the Mellon building is readied and the feasability of preparing "interim space" in College Hall. He added that planners, taking into consideration the uncertainty of such an outcome, have not spent much time talking with representatives of the two offices about moving more than once. "We fully recognize that this is a very major disruption, so we don't even want to suggest moving them twice if it's not necessary," he said. "You don't put the people through the aggravation of even thinking about it unless it's really necessary." The University is currently waiting for contractors to submit bids for the Mellon building work, Arthur Gravina, vice president of facilities management, said this week. He said administrators will not have a clear idea how much the project costs until they decide which bid to accept, adding that he expects a firm to be selected sometime in August so that work can begin during the fall.

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