Hamilton College House residents are in for a busy scene on move-in day.
Scaffolding currently envelopes the high rise's base, long wires trail down its sides and dirt piles, bulldozers and trailers fill its surrounding fields.
Over the summer, the long-awaited high rise renovation plan finally commenced, and Penn is now in it for the long haul.
In February, the University unveiled its $80 million, six-year plan to remodel the high rises primarily during the summer months to reduce campus disruption. These renovations are the first step in the plan to revamp Hamilton Village, which was first announced in 1998 and has faced significant obstacles and postponements until now.
The good news is that everything is going according to plan in terms of both time and budget, administrators said.
"Everything that was supposed to happen happened," Director of Housing and Conference Services Doug Berger said.
Hamilton College House, commonly known as High Rise North, is now equipped with an upgraded fire alarm system with sprinklers and has gone through the preliminary stages of exterior concrete repair.
"They've done the loud work over the summer," Berger said, explaining that the patching and sealing of the building's facade will be finished by November.
But while administrators may be happy with the renovation progress, many students hoped that more work would be completed by now.
"I was pretty pissed off when there were construction workers sandblasting outside my window in the morning," Resident Advisor and College senior Errol Bakal said. "It was supposed to be over by now."
Also, the replacing of the building's four infamously unreliable elevators is still in progress, as their use was necessary over the summer for workers to install the sprinkler system. Two elevators are now finished, according to Berger, and the other two will be repaired successively over the academic year.
Additionally, the field located between Hamilton and 40th Street will not be frisbee-friendly until next spring. As part of the Hamilton Village project's landscape restoration, workers will continue through the fall sprucing up the area with new sod, an irrigation and drainage system and a Locust Walk-like pathway lined with lights, trees and benches, to be completed by the end of September.
During the academic year, Vice President for Facilities and Real Estate Services Omar Blaik said that he foresees the outside scaffolding to be the sole construction-related inconvenience for residents of Hamilton.
"And if there's anything that we believe will be done that will be more noisy than just a painter painting on the facade, we will be notifying the college house system," Blaik said, adding that workers will begin work no earlier than 9 a.m. each day.
The building will be covered with scaffolding, but residents are generally more concerned about the possibility of noisy work.
"The scaffolding is there, but it's fine with me," Bakal said. "It doesn't make any noise."
On deck for next summer is the bulk of Hamilton's more visible work, such as installing more aesthetically pleasing windows, refurnishing student rooms and creating new public spaces, including music practice rooms, updated computer labs, exercise rooms and performance spaces.
"The visual change won't be apparent until next summer," University President Judith Rodin said. "There are exciting changes, because the whole facade will look different... and we are going to have architecturally designed furniture, not off-the-shelf furniture."
Blaik could not confirm which of the two other high rises is scheduled for its makeover in the summer of 2004, but said that Harnwell College House is the more likely candidate.
