Major changes are in the pipeline for the University greenhouse and Hunter Laboratory.
A new greenhouse will be built on the roof of Hunter as part of the building's renovation for use by engineering and environmental studies faculty. The current greenhouse, the Plant Environmental Center, located between Hunter and Arnold Laboratory, will then be demolished to make way for an extension of the Walk, which stretches from the Sidney Frank Hall for Life Sciences to Waterman Street.
But the current greenhouse will receive mechanical upgrades before it is demolished to make it usable for research over the next two years.
The greenhouse received a $651,372 grant from the National Science Foundation for the upgrades, but the grant stipulates that the structure cannot be torn down for three years after the renovations, so the University is paying for the upgrades itself and hoping to put the grant money toward the new greenhouse.
Renovating Hunter
"We're moving forward with design this summer," said Stephen Maiorisi, vice president for facilities management, of Hunter's renovation. For the project, the University has again hired Toshiko Mori, the architect who renovated Pembroke Hall in 2008.
Maiorisi hopes to have preliminary designs ready to present at the October Corporation meeting. The schedule calls for the final design to be ready by April, with construction beginning in June and concluding in the fall of 2013. The psychology faculty currently housed in Hunter will move to the renovated Metcalf Chemistry and Research Laboratory this October.
In the short term, Hunter will be used as additional lab space for engineering. Eventually, it will house environmental studies — drawing some faculty away from their current offices in MacMillan Hall, Walter Hall and the BioMedical Center, thereby freeing up space in those buildings for others, Maiorisi said.
"The expectation is that — at least for a period of time, until a larger space is either created from scratch or created by rearranging other things — that some engineering expansion will be accommodated," said Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning. More detailed planning will occur over the next 12 to 24 months, particularly with the new provost and engineering dean, he said.
Locating new engineering space on College Hill or in the Jewelry District are both possibilities, Maiorisi added.
The outdoor gardens and carriage house of Brown's Urban Environmental Laboratory, once slated for eviction in order to make room for a new building for the cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences, will remain as they are — at least for now.
Maiorisi said the project has a budget of $35 million, which the University hopes to finance through a combination of loans and fundraising.
Fashioning a ‘fabulous' facility
Once Hunter is renovated with a new greenhouse on its roof, the existing greenhouse will be demolished.
The removal of the existing greenhouse will make way for an extension of the Walk, the pedestrian connection between the main and Pembroke campuses. This extension will go from Waterman Street through the greenhouse site and around Ashamu Dance Studio.
Extending the Walk was the "primary motivation" for moving the greenhouse, Maiorisi said. But also, "the greenhouse is near the end of its useful life," he said. Though the ground level is better for pedestrian access, the new rooftop location will receive more sunlight.
The building will feature "all the bells and whistles" of a "fabulous research greenhouse facility," said Fred Jackson, the greenhouse's director.
Changing plans
But one problem remains: The NSF grant for the greenhouse upgrades requires that the building remain standing for at least three years after the completion of the work. This timeline conflicts with the University's plans to demolish the greenhouse in the fall of 2013.
Professor of Biology Judith Bender, the grant's principal investigator, said she heard informally in February 2010 that the grant had been awarded and received official notice in September of that year.
At the time, the University was not planning to relocate the greenhouse, Maiorisi said. Had the University known earlier that it wanted to build a greenhouse on the roof of Hunter, it probably would not have submitted the grant proposal, he said.
"I don't think (the grant) was ever thought of as fixing the greenhouse for the long term," Spies said, though "we're probably moving it sooner than people expected," he added.
"There was always the thought that the greenhouse would move at some point," Maiorisi said. Hunter's renovation presented an opportunity to move it right next to its existing location. "Now would be the time to do it," he said.
The work for the mechanical upgrades to the existing greenhouse has been awarded to a contractor, and construction will take several months. But the work will be funded by the University, not the NSF grant. "It's much more efficient and economical" to do it this way, Maiorisi said. If the upgrades had been made using NSF grant funding, they would have taken longer because "they need to approve almost everything we're doing."
Bender said this adjustment will allow the University to demolish the current greenhouse as soon as the new one is completed.
Administrators are hoping the NSF will allow them to spend the grant funds on the new greenhouse instead.
Deal or no deal?
Only one grant proposal could be submitted per institution to the NSF's Academic Research Infrastructure program. An internal competition was run through Brown's Office of the Vice President for Research, and Bender's proposal won.
"The intent of this program is to revitalize existing research facilities," according to the program description. "It is not the intent of this program to fund new construction."
But the University may have some wiggle room. Replacement of an existing research facility may be considered in "exceptional circumstances," according to the program's website, as long as the existing facility cannot be repaired or renovated and will not be used for research after the replacement is built.
A remaining hurdle will be convincing the NSF to transfer funding that was approved for one project to a different project. It is unclear whether or not the NSF will allow the switch, but initial conversations with the foundation have been positive, Maiorisi said.
Regina White, associate vice president for research administration, wrote in a July email to The Herald that her discussions with the NSF are preliminary, and as of yet, she has nothing to report. She has not responded to calls and emails regarding the current status of the grant.
Short-term fixes
Though the existing greenhouse is scheduled to be replaced in two years, the proposed interim upgrades would bring a "substantial benefit," Maiorisi said
.
"The intention of the proposal, from our end, is to get the thing usable over the summer for the next couple of years," Bender said. "The University appreciates that we need to get the current facility fixed."
The mechanical upgrades will target the vent motors and vents, lighting, cooling system and electrical system, Bender said.
Though the funding source is no longer the NSF, upgrades will proceed as originally planned to cover only the research areas, Maiorisi said.
Bender said she was excited about the greenhouse when she came to Brown in 2007, but she soon discovered that the greenhouse's inadequate cooling system makes it unusable in the summer. Bender said her plants "barely grow" in the greenhouse's summer heat and are unable to produce seeds — a major obstacle to her genetic experiments. For summer research, she is stuck growing plants in a separate chamber.
It will be "much better to start from scratch with a brand-spanking new facility," she said.
