Earlier this month, Shawmut Design and Construction put the finishing touches on its renovation and expansion of the Peter J. Tobin College of Business, a 70,000-sf building located on the Queens, N.Y., campus of St. John’s University.
This building—named after an alumnus and former CFO of Chase Manhattan Bank—first opened in the late 1970s. At a renovation cost of $22 million, this was the largest Higher Ed project to date in New York for Shawmut’s Institutional group. Its 43-week completion schedule included $800,000 in demolition related to a complete interior gutting of the building. (During this project, business students attended classes in other buildings on campus.)
There were between 70 and 100 people working on this project at any given time.
Shawmut Vice President Anthony Miliote says his firm and Cannon Design, the project’s architect, managed to trim the project’s cost from its original budget of about $24.5 million. “Cannon was very pragmatic,” says Miliote, about making modifications to more reasonably priced materials and mechanical systems.
The $22 million renovation included an expanded lobby area. Image: Shawmut Design and Construction.
In the process, the Building Team updated the space by creating an expanded lobby area, and a high-tech “financial lab,” which Miliote explains is a large classroom/lecture space with computers.
The top two floors are mostly offices for faculty, and the bottom two classrooms. A 503-sf central staircase, with seating steps and ramp, connects the floors. And a horseshoe-shaped atrium provides more transparency throughout the building.
The exterior of the building was pretty much kept intact. The revised front façade involved about 900 sf of curtainwall and storefront glazing, which lets more natural light into the building. The entryway, says Miliote, also got new hard- and landscaping.
A 960-sf outdoor patio with a sloped glass entry was installed where a loading dock roof had once been. And the business school now includes a large multi-purpose space, student study areas, collaboration areas, a career service center, and a start-up incubator lab.
Shawmut is still doing some work for St. John’s, as well as academic projects with NYU Langone, Columbia University and Columbia Medical School, Riverdale Country School, and The Buckley School.
“A lot of this work is about keeping up with the Joneses, enhancing the student experience, and adapting to changing technology,” says Miliote.
Related Stories
| Jan 2, 2015
Construction put in place enjoyed healthy gains in 2014
Construction consultant FMI foresees—with some caveats—continuing growth in the office, lodging, and manufacturing sectors. But funding uncertainties raise red flags in education and healthcare.
| Dec 29, 2014
Spherical reflectors help spread daylight throughout a college library in Portland, Ore. [BD+C's 2014 Great Solutions Report]
The 40,000-sf library is equipped with four “cones of light,” spherical reflectors made from extruded aluminum that distribute daylight from the library’s third floor to illuminate the second. The innovation was named a 2014 Great Solution by the editors of Building Design+Construction.
BIM and Information Technology | Dec 28, 2014
The Big Data revolution: How data-driven design is transforming project planning
There are literally hundreds of applications for deep analytics in planning and design projects, not to mention the many benefits for construction teams, building owners, and facility managers. We profile some early successful applications.
| Dec 28, 2014
AIA course: Enhancing interior comfort while improving overall building efficacy
Providing more comfortable conditions to building occupants has become a top priority in today’s interior designs. This course is worth 1.0 AIA LU/HSW.
| Dec 28, 2014
6 trends steering today's college residence halls
University students want more in a residence hall than just a place to sleep. They want a space that reflects their style of living and learning.
| Dec 10, 2014
New study says prefab elements saved Colorado hospital $4.3 million in construction
A study by engineers at the University of Colorado Boulder found that prefab approaches on the new Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver cut 72 workdays off the schedule and resulted in millions in savings.
| Dec 9, 2014
UC Merced campus earns fourth LEED Platinum certification
The award brings the campus total for LEED certifications through the U.S. Green Building Council to 13, with its newest building under construction, the second Classroom and Office Building, expected to also achieve platinum status.
| Dec 2, 2014
Nonresidential construction spending rebounds in October
This month's increase in nonresidential construction spending is far more consistent with the anecdotal information floating around the industry, says ABC's Chief Economist Anirban Basu.
| Dec 1, 2014
How public-private partnerships can help with public building projects
Minimizing lifecycle costs and transferring risk to the private sector are among the benefits to applying the P3 project delivery model on public building projects, according to experts from Skanska USA.
| Nov 20, 2014
Frank Gehry creates fanciful brick façade for Australian business school
The fluid brickwork of the new Dr. Chau Chak Wing Building at the University of Technology, Sydney, is comprised of 320,000 pieces made by hand.
