Boston University is undergoing six major construction projects on the Charles River and Medical campus during the fall 2016 semester, including the building of the BU Theatre Center, according to BU Facilities Management and Planning.
The BU Theatre Center, located at 820 Commonwealth Ave., will be a 75,000 square-foot building with a black box theater, classrooms and design labs for students and professors, according to the a letter facilities sent to the BU community.
The building, expected to be completed by fall 2017, will replace the BU Theatre on Huntington Avenue after BU ended its relationship with the Huntington Theatre Company, The Daily Free Press reported March 24.
Other projects include the construction of the Center for Integrated Life Sciences and Engineering Building at 610 Commonwealth Ave. and the renovation of Myles Standish Hall and Myles Annex, the oldest dorm building on BU campus.
BU spokesperson Colin Riley said the university is constantly updating and renovating academic space and residence halls to improve students’ experience. BU students are used to construction projects on campus, so their daily lives won’t be disturbed, he said.
“If you look over the period of years, we’ve preferably had over $2 billion in new construction in the past 20 years,” Riley said. “Sometimes it looks like there is more because there are projects that the university is not involved in, or they are not university projects.”
Christina Lucas, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, said although students have to put up with increased traffic and noise, the renovations are totally worth the trouble.
“There are so many people, and there’s a lot of traffic going on,” Lucas said. “But ultimately, it’s really good that the school is deciding to do a lot of this reconstruction. It’s a very necessary thing because the school has been around for so long.”
Lucas said she is most excited about the renovation of Myles, the dorm she lived in during sophomore year, because “there were a lot of things needed to be done.”
Riley said all the projects for the fall semester are part of BU’s Institutional Master Plan or were approved by the BU Community Task Force and the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
“Students should expect what has taken place at BU for the past 40 years, which is continued investment in new facilities and academic support facilities, [and] bringing them up to state-of-the-art laboratories, classrooms and residence halls,” he said. “There’s usually some disruption but that’s the nature of the city, and the city is able to deal with it quite well.”
BU’s 10-year master plan, submitted by the Board of Trustees in August 2012, includes the proposal of building Student Village Residence III, creating a pocket park at the intersection of Beacon Street and Bay State Road and adding more academic buildings.
Though the renovations do not negatively affect students lives, Aviva Englander, a junior in the College of Engineering, said she has certainly noticed the construction.
“I actually lived in Myles last year, and I decided not to live there again this year because of the construction,” said Englander. “But it hasn’t bothered me around campus though, since I’m living in 1047 Commonwealth Ave.”
Annalou Cruz, a CAS junior, said although her life wasn’t impacted, upgrades on the Medical Campus have been disturbing student work.
“It hasn’t affected me,” Cruz said. “But I have some lab members who work at in the labs at the School of Public Health and have said it’s a lot of noise.”
