After a year of heavy construction on the Charles River campus, Boston University students can expect just the same, if not more, when they return in the fall, said President Robert Brown.
However, school and city officials said students may see some significant changes as well because of the progress they hope to gain while many students are on break this summer.
“I’d love to say [the campus next year] will be beautiful, the trees will be planted [and] the curbs will be in, but that would be lying to you,” said President Robert Brown in an April 27 interview. “We will have another year like this.”
Major developments with completion dates ranging from one to 20 years, including the Commonwealth Avenue Improvement Project, the Student Village 2 project and the BU Bridge Redevelopment, will further progress over summer and into the next academic year. University officials say they also have plans to review different buildings for renovations.
CAP will continue to affect the Charles River campus and will move from underground work to more visible roadwork.
Brown said he is optimistic for the MBTA project, which began in April 2005 and aims to connect the Kenmore T and bus stations with a canopy, will be completed by next winter.
CAP, which city officials say is on target with its projected completion date of summer 2008, was designed to improve the look of Commonwealth Avenue and make it a safer road by adding trees and larger sidewalks and removing traffic lanes.
Over the past year, construction workers have focused on internal aspects of the project, including replacing underground pipes, Brown said.
“Most of the construction is still laying sewage pipes and drainage pipes and rerouting infrastructure systems,” he said. “None of the construction, so far, is really in terms of doing the beautification part.”
CAP involves working with city officials, because the commonwealth is coordinating and funding the project, said BU Operations Vice President Gary Nicksa.
The project is on schedule and within its original budget, said Massachusetts Highway Department spokesman Erik Abell in an email. With drainage work about 75 percent complete, city officials are anticipating more significant work over the summer as “foot traffic decreases,” on the BU campus, he said.
In the next week or two, the city plans to work on the sidewalks and extend the project farther from Kenmore Square down to the BU Bridge and begin road rehabilitation work during the summer, Abell said.
“Come the fall, we expect students will notice a difference in the walkability of the corridor,” he said. “While work will still be going on, we hope the corridor will begin to look like the final product. The result of a heavy summer’s worth of work.”
In the fall, construction teams will repair the road in phases to accommodate commuters and events, such as Red Sox games, which make the area especially crowded, Nicksa said.
“Because there are 12 more months to go on the project, it is going . . . to be a lot of construction,” Nicksa said. “We won’t see it wind down until the last two to three weeks of the project.”
BU has also decided the College of Fine Arts and School of Law must be updated, Nicksa said. These projects, which are still in the planning and fundraising discussion phase, will target classrooms, laboratories and student spaces, but will most likely not significantly affect campus next semester.
“Those are two facilities that we have identified as needing significant renewal and change,” Nicksa said. “The way arts are taught and law is taught have changed.”
The School of Law project could take anywhere from 12 to 18 months to complete, while CFA improvements could take years to accomplish, Nicksa said.
The StuVi 2 project, which will provide housing for more than 960 more students to live on campus, is an ongoing project with a completion date of summer 2009, said Auxiliary Services Vice President Peter Cusato.
The project broke ground earlier this semester and is being built beside the existing 10 Buick Street residence. It will be a 26-story building with 544 suites, 396 apartment-style residences and 20 resident assistant rooms. The Housing Office has taken measures to let Student Village residents know about the potential for construction near their residence by meeting with them in late February, Cusato said.
The noisiest parts of construction have already been completed, Cusato said, and when excavation continues after commencement this month, “it will be a non-event for people altogether.”
“What people will see when they come back in the fall will be a steel erection,” Cusato said. “We’ll be starting some pieces of the facade.”
BU developments must be organized into categories because concrete projects like CAP and Student Village differ from plans that have not shaped yet, Nicksa said.
“A project, which means something that is tangible, has been designed,” he said. “When we do individual projects, we want to do them in a way that is consistent with vision.”
Nicksa gave the example of the 20-year vision to combine BU efforts with the city to transform the BU Bridge area into a transportation hub.
The plan for the new campus center is in conceptual stages, and BU has no specific timeline or concrete plan for the area, so it will not affect students next year, Nicksa said.
The controversial construction of the BU Level 4 Biosafety Laboratory on the Medical Campus is about one-third built and is still scheduled for completion in fall 2008, Nicksa said.
Looking toward potential projects, Nicksa said city officials are tentatively considering replacing the water mains on Bay State Road, many of which are anywhere between 50 and 100 years old. While there are limited specifics about the project, Nicksa said city officials are projecting it will be a four-to-five month project.
“It is a city road, so [workers] will do it when they can,” Nicksa said. “It’s never great to have these projects, but it is an upgrade that is necessary.”