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Mass. state colleges take advantage of $2B infrastructure bond bill
The $2 billion higher education infrastructure bond bill signed into law by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick last week will pump hundreds of millions of dollars into state and community college tech facilities, with colleges planning to build new facilities and renovate others that are decades old.
The state college system had depleted the funds from the last bond bill, passed in 1995, which allowed for $600 million, according to state Sen. Stephen Panagiotakos (D-Lowell). Panagiotakos, chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, said the state university system needs an upgrade.
“You can’t do the kind of cutting-edge research we have the talent for on campus without new facilities,” he said.
The University of Massachusetts Amherst took home the biggest haul in the bond bill — almost $200 million to build new science facilities and renovate buildings built from the 1950s to the 1970s.
The school’s Integrated Sciences building, for which it received $100 million in the new bond bill, is already under construction. The building will have R&D labs, classrooms and lecture space, and is planned to be completed by next year, according to UMass spokesperson Ed Blaguszewski. Renovations will also be made to the Lederle Graduate Research Center ($41.2 million) and Morrill Science Center ($51.3 million). The school has hired Boston-based Wilson Architects Inc. to determine the best design of the new science space, Blaguszewski said.
The UMass system received more than $275 million for tech-related projects in the bill, while the state and community colleges landed almost $500 million.
Bridgewater State College was the big winner among state colleges, getting $98.7 million for renovations to its Conant Science Center. Bryan Baldwin, chief of staff for Bridgewater State College president Dana Mohler-Faria, called the project the biggest in the college’s 168-year history. One wing of the L-shaped building will be razed and rebuilt, while the other will be gutted and renovated.
When the Conant Science Center was built in 1969, the school had about 1,000 students, Baldwin said. It now enrolls more than 10,000. In the past, the majority of students using the center went on to become science teachers — now the school is graduating scientists.
While the school already gets more applicants than it can accept, the new building may help attract top-level teaching talent, Baldwin said.
“For them to walk through that front door and see the quality of the building is certainly going to be a huge draw,” he said.
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