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
| Jul 28, 2014
Reconstruction market benefits from improving economy, new technology [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Following years of fairly lackluster demand for commercial property remodeling, reconstruction revenue is improving, according to the 2014 Giants 300 report.
| Jul 28, 2014
Reconstruction Sector Construction Firms [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Structure Tone, Turner, and Gilbane top Building Design+Construction's 2014 ranking of the largest reconstruction contractor and construction management firms in the U.S.
| Jul 28, 2014
Reconstruction Sector Engineering Firms [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Jacobs, URS, and Wiss, Janney, Elstner top Building Design+Construction's 2014 ranking of the largest reconstruction engineering and engineering/architecture firms in the U.S.
| Jul 28, 2014
Reconstruction Sector Architecture Firms [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Stantec, HDR, and HOK top Building Design+Construction's 2014 ranking of the largest reconstruction architecture and architecture/engineering firms in the U.S.
| Jul 23, 2014
Architecture Billings Index up nearly a point in June
AIA reported the June ABI score was 53.5, up from a mark of 52.6 in May.
| Jul 21, 2014
Economists ponder uneven recovery, weigh benefits of big infrastructure [2014 Giants 300 Report]
According to expert forecasters, multifamily projects, the Panama Canal expansion, and the petroleum industry’s “shale gale” could be saving graces for commercial AEC firms seeking growth opportunities in an economy that’s provided its share of recent disappointments.
| Jul 18, 2014
Contractors warm up to new technologies, invent new management schemes [2014 Giants 300 Report]
“UAV.” “LATISTA.” “CMST.” If BD+C Giants 300 contractors have anything to say about it, these new terms may someday be as well known as “BIM” or “LEED.” Here’s a sampling of what Giant GCs and CMs are doing by way of technological and managerial innovation.
| Jul 18, 2014
Top Construction Management Firms [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Jacobs, Barton Malow, Hill International top Building Design+Construction's 2014 ranking of the largest construction management and project management firms in the United States.
| Jul 18, 2014
Top Contractors [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Turner, Whiting-Turner, Skanska top Building Design+Construction's 2014 ranking of the largest contractors in the United States.
| Jul 18, 2014
Engineering firms look to bolster growth through new services, technology [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Following solid revenue growth in 2013, the majority of U.S.-based engineering and engineering/architecture firms expect more of the same this year, according to BD+C’s 2014 Giants 300 report.
