Grab your hard hat if you’re heading to Simon Hall. Renovation work begins Monday, May 19. Everything to the east of Simon’s main north-south corridor will be under construction this summer with the exception of the Skandalaris Center and CEL suite. Phase one is scheduled to be complete by August 15th. Phase two will occur in the Summer of 2015. See artist’s renderings of the renovations on the Building Olin website.
Artist’s rendering of the renovated Flag Hallway.
Construction activities will also impact the Simon Hall parking lot. A construction fence will be erected on Monday defining the area needed for construction equipment and materials. This area will be in the east half of the Simon Hall parking lot and will extend toward Forsyth to include the first two rows of parking. The road that connects the Simon Hall parking lot with the Danforth University Center will be blocked by the construction zone. Please note that the exit from the Simon Hall parking lot at Olympian Way is “Right Turn Only” so those needing to turn left on Forsyth when leaving campus will want to park in the DUC garage during the summer.
Inside Simon Hall, the areas under construction will be partitioned off from the rest of Simon for safety. As Simon’s elevator is within the construction zone, it will not be accessible. With regard to the general impact of construction on those in the west half of Simon, we are likely to experience some low levels of noise and vibration that will not interfere with normal conversation but will be noticeable background noise from time to time. We are most likely to notice this during the first few weeks of construction as demolition takes place.
Part of the renovation of Simon involves replacing original HVAC equipment with newer equipment that is much more energy efficient. The HVAC equipment that will be replaced serves the areas under construction and also a portion of the second floor that is not under construction (south bar and south half of west bar). To keep these second floor areas habitable over the summer, temporary HVAC equipment will be installed outside the building and will be hooked into Simon’s ductwork to provide conditioned air. As we transition to this temporary HVAC system, HVAC service to these parts of the second floor will be down from 5/19 through 5/21. We are hopeful that a combination of relatively mild temperatures and the work of the rest of the building’s HVAC systems will keep the affected areas comfortable during this three day outage.
Later in the summer, we will experience one or two planned power outages. These will be scheduled for off hours. We will provide as much advance notice as possible before these outages to avoid disruption of long running research computing processes. At present the dates of these outages are unknown.
Thanks to Brian Bannister for this update on the Simon Hall renovation.
