A number of building projects have transformed campus in recent years, including the renovations of J. Walter Wilson, Faunce House, Rhode Island Hall and Pembroke Hall, as well as the recently completed construction of the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts. But not all plans have reached such a smooth completion. The 2008 financial collapse and recession have impacted the University's finances, and other circumstances have delayed some projects.
When the University began developing the Plan for Academic Enrichment in 2002, the initiatives it laid out required physical growth and building projects. So in June of that year, the University hired architectural firm Kliment Halsband to draft such a plan, which became the Strategic Framework for Physical Planning. This plan outlined general principles to guide future growth, laid out possibilities for repurposing existing buildings and identified locations for potential new buildings. It also established a vision of expansion into Providence's Jewelry District.
Also envisioned in the framework was a new pathway, called "The Walk," linking Brown's main and Pembroke campuses, with green space and new buildings fronting it.
While construction of The Walk is complete — aside from a long-term vision of connecting it to Lincoln Field — plans for an adjoining "Mind Brain Behavior Center" never came to fruition. In 2007, the Corporation approved a location on the south side of Angell Street, between J. Walter Wilson and The Walk, to construct a home for the departments of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences and Psychology, which ultimately merged in 2010. But the recession put the brakes on the project. Struggles to raise the approximately $70 million needed forced administrators to think twice about the new building.
The location of the proposed Mind Brain Behavior building also met resistance from students and faculty because it would have required removing the Urban Environmental Lab from its current location and either finding it a new site or scrapping it altogether.
With few other suitable sites and without the money for new construction, administrators took a new look at an old building: Metcalf Chemistry and Research Laboratory. The building housed the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences and was partially vacant following the move of the Department of Neuroscience to Sidney Frank Hall for Life Sciences. Metcalf is currently undergoing a $42 million renovation to be completed in October, and will house the growing cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences faculty.
Similarly, a new building had been planned for the Alpert Medical School. But financial troubles also transformed that project into a renovation. The Medical Education Building, which is a renovation of a former industrial building in the Jewelry District, will open in August for the start of Med School classes.
Administrators offer an upbeat take on the decision to renovate existing buildings, promoting historic preservation and environmental friendliness as benefits of the more cost-effective projects. "We can still achieve almost 99 percent of what we had intended to do," Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning told The Herald in 2009. And Stephen Maiorisi, vice president for facilities management, called renovations a "very green thing to do."
Though these renovation projects are all moving ahead, one building project is missing from campus — new residence halls. University officials, including President Ruth Simmons, have been discussing the need for new dorms for years. At the Oct. 2006 Corporation meeting, officials evaluated different building sites and looked at financial models. But as of 2007, the planning seemed to have been put on hold.
Since then, the Corporation has discussed building and renovating dorms at its meetings, and its members approved funding in Oct. 2010 for the 32-bed building at 315 Thayer St. to be converted into an expanded residence hall. Simmons also told the Undergraduate Council of Students at a March 2010 meeting that she envisioned a large new dorm project. Currently, administrators say they are working on plans for dorm construction and renovation, but no other specific projects are in the works yet.
