Facing a difficult economic climate, the Corporation scaled back plans this weekend for two major academic projects - a planned Medical Education Center and a brain science building - saying those projects would likely involve renovations of existing buildings instead of new structures and would proceed sooner rather than later.
The Corporation also gave final approval for construction of the new Creative Arts Center and the renovation of Faunce House into a new campus center, which will begin this summer.
In scrapping the original plans for the two buildings, one a centerpiece of a $100 million gift to the Alpert Medical School and the other an ambitious building that was supposed to be built along The Walk, the Corporation appeared to strike a solution that allowed it to push ahead with important academic priorities while navigating new financial obstacles to campus expansion.
"We thought very hard about the consequences of putting everything on hold," President Ruth Simmons said in an interview Sunday, but the Corporation deemed it "not sensible" to do so.
The cost of renovating an old building is about one-half to two-thirds of building new, said Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior advisor to the president. He said the University first began exploring renovation in early January, when it became clear that the economic crisis would have a long-term effect on the University's finances.
"We haven't just given up our goals - that's the other way to save money," he said. "The whole idea has been to focus our resources to be able to move forward."
Simmons wrote in an e-mail to the Brown community Saturday that "the difficulty and inadvisability of debt-funded capital projects led the Corporation to suggest that we should, wherever possible and prudent, consider re-use and renovation as an alternative near-term solution to our unfunded facilities needs."
Although there is no set deadline for a decision on how and whether renovations might take the place of a new brain sciences or medical education building, the University hopes to present a definitive plan to the Corporation at its next meeting in May, Spies said. He said construction on both projects could potentially begin as early as this summer.
Renovations could transform either an existing campus building - as with the recent creation of a new student services building in J. Walter Wilson, previously a laboratory - or a new acquisition, like the former factory building in the Jewelry District that now houses the University's fundraising operations.
The new brain sciences building - previously slated for land currently occupied by the Urban Environmental Lab and two nearby houses - will most likely occupy an older building near campus, Spies said, and the medical education building will be located in the Jewelry District.
No decisions have been made on specific buildings to renovate, said Beppie Huidekoper, executive vice president for finance and administration, and the University already has over $25 million in funds for each project.
Moving ahead
Construction on the Stephen Robert '62 Campus Center in Faunce House, which will begin this summer, may be less expensive than expected.
Because contractors have bid more competitively for that project than previously expected, the University has been able to negotiate lower prices, Huideloper said. Bids have been coming in up to 25 percent lower than originally budgeted, bringing the estimated cost down from $20 to $18 million.
Spies said the University will begin looking for a contractor and drawing detailed plans for the Creative Arts Center, which has met Corporation funding guidelines with over half of its funding in hand and the rest lined up to come in before completion. Ground has already been broken for the building along The Walk between Angell and Olive Streets, and construction could begin as early as late spring or early summer, he said.
"We're not stopping," Simmons said Sunday. "We're still here, we're still doing things."
The University has postponed other large-scale capital projects - including the construction of a new data center and a planned replacement of the Human Resources system - in order to meet tightened budget goals, Huidekoper said.
Currently, the University's core technology infrastructure - including data storage, research systems and financial databases - is stored in the basement of the Center for Information Technology. There is no backup for this information and little room for expansion in its current location, Huidekoper said.
"If it got flooded, we would have big trouble," she said.
The University was also looking into replacing old Human Resources computer systems. "We're just going to have to keep (the current system) alive some years longer than we were going to before," Huidekoper said.
