Boston University provided student residents of Kilachand Hall on 91 Bay State Road with housing subsidies due to construction-related disruptions as renovation on the building continues. Residents were given 25% off the total price of their rental rate for both the Fall and Spring semester.
The renovation project will add new stairs and an elevator on the west side of the building, make selected student rooms compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act and redesign the study lounge located on the ninth floor.
Students complained about the noise level and dust conditions that occurred during daily construction work hours from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
“The construction that they’re doing blows the dust from bricks and mortar through the cracks and little slits in our window, so there’s dust all over our windowsills,” said Carter Plantinga, a sophomore in College of Arts and Sciences.
Christa Campbell, a sophomore in College of Communication, said she is able to avoid the construction noises by going to class during its operation time, but is forced to wake up early even when she does not have morning classes.
“I don’t have 8 a.m. [classes] on Wednesdays and Fridays, and I want to sleep in and I literally can’t because it’s loud,” Campbell said. “So I just get up and do homework or whatever.”
Plantinga said he faces the same plight.
“Every morning, since the beginning of the semester, I’ve been woken up at 7:15, 7:20, because it’s incredibly loud,” Plantinga said. “Most days I don’t have to wake up for my classes until 11, but I end up waking up about four hours early.”
Furthermore, the scaffolding around Kilachand Hall has also caused visual problems.
“You can’t really see in or out of the building, because it’s all just one big black screen,” Plantinga said. “You can see out a little bit, but it’s like when you’re a kid and you put a t-shirt over your eyes — you can kind of see through it, but not really.”
BU spokesperson Colin Riley, said the students were fully informed of the Kilachand Hall renovation before the construction started.
“If you chose to continue to live there, or opted to choose to live there for this academic year, you would have had full understanding of what was expected there,” Riley said. “Generally, construction has some disruption, some noise, although the time is scheduled not to begin too early and has a beginning and an end.”
The project is expected to be completed in August 2023, according to BU Campus Planning and Operations.
“The reason we’re doing the renovations is because we’ve invested so much in the buildings, we want to make sure that the value and the quality of the buildings are well maintained,” Riley said.
