Multimillion dollar capital improvements to be effected

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by Christof Spieler

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The Rice campus will benefit from a series of small improvements over the summer as part of the university's on-going capital improvements program.

Prominent on the list are a 24-hour reference and study area in Fondren Library, the consolidation of entrances 4 and 5 into a single entrance and a crushed granite sidewalk around campus.

The budget also includes many maintenance projects, including repaving of portions of the Inner Loop and the stadium lot and refurbishing of the exterior of Physics Laboratories. There will also be some lighting and landscaping improvements.

The university spends about $5 to $7 million on capital projects annually, in addition to major construction projects like the Computational Engineering Building and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

Fondren study lounge

The study lounge, described as an "integrated learning center" by Interim Librarian David Minter, will utilize the northeastern corner of Fondren Library, which will be vacated when the Computational Engineering Building and Baker Institute are completed. It will include the library's reference, bibliography and reserve sections (some 58,000 volumes), tables and study carrels for 110 students (including 50 Macintosh, UNIX and Windows computers) and four study rooms for 4 to 6 people each. Additional Powerbook laptops like those already available at the circulation desk will also be provided.

"This will be the best research space ever created for students on the Rice campus," Minter said.

Architecturally, the space will resemble the current periodicals rooms, with a two-story open space overlooked by a balcony. This will restore it to its original configuration before it was converted to offices.

The space will be designed so it can be isolated from the rest of the building and opened 24 hours. Minter said this would require one or two staff members.

The remodeling will also increase Fondren's total stack space by 246,900 volumes, which is equivelant to six or seven years of collection growth.

The library is currently at capacity, even after recent stack improvements, and the remote storage facility under Rice Stadium is at capacity with 250,000 volumes.

This expansion, made possible by consolidating some offices in newly-available basement space and by eliminating the little-used Macintosh classroom downstairs, buys time for evaluating library expansion possibilites.

"We certainly need to expand capacity," Minter said. "This gives us a crucial window."

Libraries, he noted, are among the most rapidly evolving institutions on college campuses.

"We need not just new space but space of new kinds unlike anything we have now. That makes planning complicated."

The space is currently occupied by the Computer and Informational Technology Institute, the Center for Research on Parallel Computing and the Baker Institute. CITI and CRPC will move out in August upon completion of the CEB; the Baker Institute should move into its new building in early spring of 1997.

This will probably allow completion of the new space in the summer of 1997, but construction delays in Baker or Fondren could postpone that.

"I think we a have a shot at opening by fall of '97," Minter said.

New entrance

Entrances 4 and 5 on Main Street will be closed and replaced with a new entrance, to be located at the southern end of the Sid Richardson College resident lot.

According to Jill Blackwelder of Facilities and Engineering, the goal is to improve the traffic situation, enhance security and conform with the original university general plan.

"It always bothered us from a traffic planning point of view that people have to make U-turns to get into the parking lot. This solves that problem. It also helps control access -- there's one fewer way to get off and on campus. [Campus Police Chief] Mary Voswinkle is very supportive."

Rice is currently talking to the city about the possibility of building a new left-turn lane from the northbound lanes of Main Street into this entrance. "We're optimistic we'll be able to work that out," Blackwelder said.

There was actually a campus entrance in the planned location until the construction of SRC in the early '70s; the university general plan envisioned it as one end of Alumni Way, which now ends at the tennis courts next to Wiess College.

The work should take place starting this summer.

The entrance reconstruction is in conjunction with METRO's project to upgrade Main Street, adding concrete lanes to reduce pavement damage by buses.

The project will also include a new sidewalk on Main Street. The current concrete path is in poor condition, heavily buckled by tree roots. It will be replaced with a crushed granite path similar to many already in place in Hermann Park. The loose stone will allow air and water to reach tree roots underneath. Blackwelder said that the path should last at least 10 years before additional stone must be added.

Other projects

There will also be several repaving projects on campus. The Inner Loop alongside Wiess and Herring Hall will be rebuilt with a more durable concrete underlay. The current gravel bed has turned out to be inadequate for the loads shuttle buses put on it.

"The roads were not really designed for that kind of vehicle," Blackwelder said.

Concrete promises to hold up better, and it has been adopted as the campus standard, though it is more expensive than lighter-duty pavement. The road will be replaced one lane at a time, allowing traffic to continue using the other lane.

In addition, part of the stadium lot will be replaced as part of a continuing improvement project. The lane from Alice Pratt Brown Hall to the stadium will also be repaved with a concrete underlay to reduce wear from shuttle buses.

Additional lighting will be installed at several spots on campus, including the northeastern corner of Founder's Court and on the path leading from Anderson Hall to the Student Center, alongside the northern side of Fondren Library.

The Baker Institute construction is also prompting some projects. Alumni Drive next to the Student Center will be closed sometime in the next few months to extend steam tunnels to the new building. That section of road will also get new landscaping.

This item appeared in the News section of the March 29, 1996 issue.

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