STARKVILLE – A drive around Mississippi State University this summer reveals the fact slowly but surely: The campus is awash with construction.
Current projects can be separated into two categories: improvement and establishment. In the improvement category, the university is expanding its water heating and cooling loop and renovating several aging buildings. And in the way of establishment, the school is on its way to creating a new parking lot and erecting a couple new buildings.
The man who oversees the logistics and planning of construction at the school, Tim Muzzi, gave an impromptu tour of the campus Monday and a few details about each project on it.
Muzzi, the university architect, said he was excited to get about campus and give the tour – bureaucracy dominates his schedule – even though he”s very busy.
“You know,” said Muzzi, summing up the work, “everything we do here is for the benefit of the students” health, safety and welfare.”
Navigating the campus in a white Ford Windstar reserved for facilities management business, Muzzi, who graduated from the university”s School of Architecture in 1979, first pointed out the Lloyd-Ricks Building, home of MSU”s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
“It”s under renovation,” he said. “It”s a Mississippi landmark.”
An 18-month construction contract for the building is set to expire in the spring of 2011, Muzzi said.
Next, he was pointing out a fenced-off expanse of grass with bulldozers sitting idle on it. There was the center of a growing water loop system the university uses to heat and cool the buildings. The expansion will allow the system to serve more buildings on campus, thus increasing its efficiency, Muzzi said.
Construction of the new residence hall began July 1. It will take up 125,000 square feet between McComas Hall and Rice Hall and assume the shape of a capital L. It is scheduled to open in August 2010.
The university is in the process of creating a new gravel parking lot next to the site of the residence hall, to accommodate the additional students who will live there.
Next, Muzzi swung the vehicle around to the old band hall on Herbert Street. It has been vacant for the past couple years, Muzzi said. “We”ll put entrance doors in here and turn it back … for bona fide use,” he said.
The Middleton ROTC Building is another structure under renovation. (The exterior was renovated about two years ago, and now the interior is being brought up to date.) Muzzi expects it to be ready for use in late fall.
Harned Hall, too, is being renovated, and faculty and staff will be able to move in in January 2011, Muzzi said.
Meanwhile, Suttle Hall, once a bustling residence hall, is “no longer a viable building, Muzzi said “the plumbing and other elements of the building have fallen by the wayside” and will soon be torn down.
A large swath of land next to a hill is fenced off in the Thad Cochran Research, Technology & Economic Development Park. Soon there will be a New Multi-Tenant Building, according to a sign behind the fence.
The university”s athletics department has been taking bids for a new basketball practice facility to be located next to Humphrey Coliseum. “It”ll go right here, on this grassy knoll,” Muzzi said. He hopes the university will break ground there by the end of July.
And once Muzzi returned to the Cooley Building, where he has an office cluttered with rolled-up and spread-out blueprints, his colleague, Roger Baker, reminded him of landscaping projects in the works.
Facilities management staffers have been fixing up the area in front of the video board at Davis Wade Stadium with new fencing, pavement and landscaping, said Baker, associate director of campus landscape for facilities management.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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