UMass drops plan for showcase auditorium

Daily Hampshire Gazette - Saturday, March 17, 2007
By Kristin Palpini, staff writer

AMHERST - The University of Massachusetts is scrapping plans for a freestanding 500-seat auditorium in favor of a scaled-down classroom and office building with attached auditorium.

Joyce M. Hatch, vice chancellor for administration and finance, presented an updated version of the five-year UMass Amherst capital plan to the Faculty Senate this week.

"There's a lot of good going on, on this campus," Hatch said. "We will have a lot of new buildings and that's good news, but soon we will have to take care of all of the maintenance that comes along with it."

UMass officials had been considering the construction of a grand auditorium on campus. But after a feasibility study, they decided the university does not have enough money to do the idea justice.

"For purely financial reasons, we just can't do this," said Robert Francis, associate vice chancellor for facilities and campus planning, who also spoke at the meeting Thursday.

Instead, the university is planning to construct a $24 million academic and office building, which will include a toned-down auditorium with 500 seats. The location for the building has not been determined.

UMass has a $710 million, five-year capital plan to improve its buildings and to construct new edifices such as a $93 million Integrated Science Building and a $25 million Studio Arts Building. Money for the capital plan is secured mostly through borrowing, fees paid to the university and donations. The state is slated to pick up $70 million, or 10 percent, of the projected cost.

During her talk, Hatch also detailed construction of a new police station, a new bus transit station and a multitude of deferred maintenance projects.

A $10 million police station is slated for construction across from the fire station at Tilson Farm. The new station is still in the planning phase. Hatch said she expects it to be built by the end of 2009.

Hatch said the UMass police station, located across from the Mullins Center in an academic building, does not meet the needs of the campus. Hatch said that when police have to bring a person in after an arrest, the arrested person is trotted through the academic halls, which are not a controlled environment unlike a regular police station.

An $8 million bus transit center is planned for construction beginning this summer. The federal government is paying half of the project's costs, Hatch said.

Hatch said the university will soon spend $9 million to update labs in buildings that are over 100 years old. These buildings include the French Greenhouse and the Hatch Hall labs.

"These spaces are at a time when they are going to fall down, we will need to take them down or improve them," Hatch said.

Projects linked to about $250 million of the campus' $710 million capital plan have already been completed, Francis said. They include the $93 million North Residential Area apartments, the $3.1 million track and field facility and the $13 million Berkshire Dining Commons renovation.

Even with $710 million being spent on capital projects, UMass officials say more money must be spent on infrastructure. UMass needs an estimated $1.3 billion to tackle deferred maintenance and improve ailing infrastructure, they say.

Hatch said many of the buildings' structural problems are due to their age. The average building on campus is 40 years old.