Feature

May/June 2009

Heart and Hearth of Campus

A student-union renovation at Michigan’s Kalamazoo College revives the social center of campus life

By Debra Wood

The transformation of the student union at Kalamazoo College’s Hicks Center is meant to delight the eye and create a warm welcome.

The renovated Hicks Center retains its classic exterior appearance. (Photo courtesy of Keith Mumma Photography)

“We wanted the building to draw students in, consolidate services by bringing the health center in, and do a better job of arranging functions in the building,” says Paul Manstrom, director of facilities management at the southwestern Michigan college. “It was a great project, and this building is being used as we hoped.”

Architect Ron Boezwinkle, project manager for Tower Pinkster, Kalamazoo, seized on the opportunity to rejuvenate the old building to create a campus social center.

“We framed our design around [providing] a heart and hearth of the campus,” says Boezwinkle, adding that the original building had seven fireplaces, which created a homey feel. “It’s to be a living room for the students when they are away from home.”

Miller-Davis carefully protected a historic mural during renovation and it became an eye-catching addition to the college’s new dining hall. (Photo courtesy of Anthony Dugal)

In addition, the college wanted to make the building barrier free. The original structure was built in three phases, the oldest section in the 1930s. The build-out resulted in 11 levels, none of which was easily accessible. Tower Pinkster solved the accessibility issue by removing the building’s core and replacing it with a center atrium. Architects added an elevator that opens front and back. Ramps and sloped flooring connect other levels, and a wheelchair lift was added to the two-level bookstore.

Miller-Davis Co. of Kalamazoo (AGC of Michigan member) began the $14.6-million, 80,000-sq-ft project in March 2007, maintaining the building envelope, tearing down and rebuilding from within while the dining facilities and bookstore remained in use. During a holiday break, crews relocated the bookstore and the dining hall, including 60% of the kitchen facilities. “I’m not sure we could have done it if we hadn’t swapped those areas,” Manstrom says.

The Hicks Center renovation opened up the interior, with a central atrium that improved access to its 11 different levels. (Photo courtesy of Keith Mumma Photography)

Renovation required using more than 1,500 shoring posts. “We left the envelope standing and supported it with shoring posts,” says Michele Wreggelsworth, project manager for Miller-Davis.

No as-built drawings existed, but crews knew that all the sanitary, water and electrical services ran through the demolition area. “It was not uncommon for me to get on the phone daily with the structural engineer, saying what’s drawn was not going to work,” Wreggelsworth says. “We leveraged technology.”

Miller-Davis created a Website to accept electronic submissions and provided the college an electronic manual with close-out documents. In addition, the original building contained an historically significant mural that depicts the bridge between academia and the community of Kalamazoo. The mural became an outside wall for more than five months. Miller-Davis covered it with a breathable material during renovation; now it graces a wall of the new dining hall.

Because of the constrained site and the need to protect students, Miller-Davis placed the cranes on the south side, blindly picking and setting items such as steel for the new atrium, on the north side.

LEED Movement

The college originally planned to incorporate green features and not seek LEED certification, but students pushed the college to go for LEED.

“It was proof to them that the campus was doing what it could from an environmental standpoint, and it was committed to sustainability,” Boezwinkle says.

In the end, the building received LEED Silver certification, the first LEED-certified new construction in Kalamazoo. It earned points for recycling construction waste, energy- and water-use efficiencies, using rapidly renewable materials such as cork flooring and linoleum terrazzo flooring with recycled glass chips, and installing a roof made from recycled tires. The college already has seen a 20% reduction in its energy consumption in the building.

Miller-Davis recycled 90% of the construction waste, totalling some 2,600 tons, which exceeding the original goal of 50%. The renovation wrapped up in July 2008.

The project won a 2009 AGC Aon Build America Award.