The residents of the Engineering Trailer Complex alongside Jarvis Hall were displaced this past summer when it was demolished to make room for UB's growing engineering program.
Plans to fill the empty space and erect the new home to university engineers are underway according to Harvey Stenger, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Tim Siderakis, assistant dean and senior director of development in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Construction on the new engineering building is set to begin in the summer of 2009. Both Siderakis and Stenger said that plans for the new building are currently on schedule.
"We are in the design phase of the building," Stenger said. "Fundraising is going well, but [there is] still a significant amount to raise this year."
The cost of the building is approximately $73 million. A portion of this, almost $50 million, is paid for by New York State. The rest of the money will come from private investors, companies and alumni, according to Siderakis.
"We are continuing to raise the money. It is a joint project between New York State and private corporations," Siderakis said.
He noted that local business owner and UB School of Engineering alumnus Jack Davis recently gave $1.5 million to the project. Davis graduated from UB in 1955 with a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering. Davis owns I Squared R Element Company, Inc., which makes silicon carbide heating elements often used in laboratory research, according to their Web site.
"It is the largest gift to date towards the project," Siderakis said.
The new building will include numerous state-of-the-art elements, according to Stenger.
"The new building will have a 180-seat auditorium, a 5,000-square-foot clean room, about 180 faculty and staff offices, eight conference rooms [and] about a dozen new research laboratories," Stenger said.
The clean room will feature a filtering system that will rid the room of airborne particles, enabling intricate engineering research for projects involving fields like nanotechnology and biomedical engineering, according to a press release.
The two years it is expected to take to finish the building is a normal time frame, according to Stenger.
"We hope to move in by fall 2011," he said. "That is not unusually long for a building of this size and scope."
Stenger said that the main challenge associated with the construction of the new building will be maintaining the budget. He cited the rising costs of materials and equipment as a concern that will need to be kept in mind while progress on the plans continues.
"I don't think there are any unique challenges, other than cost control," Stenger said. "Building materials escalate unexpectedly and we must watch these inflation items carefully in case we need to make design changes."
The trailers, situated between Jarvis and Ketter halls, were built in 1988 to solve the problem of overcrowding in the engineering buildings.
Some of the trailers were used as offices or to house research, but many were not being used, according to Siderakis.
"Some were empty, [others] were basically storage," Siderakis said. "We'll find more permanent spaces for them after the building goes up."
The contents of the trailers have been temporarily relocated to other spots on campus, according to Stenger.
"Most have been moved to a temporary location in the basement of Lockwood," Stenger said. "Some have been squeezed into space in Furnas, Bell, Bonner, Jarvis and Ketter."
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
