New colleges near completion

By Catherine Bratic     1/29/09 6:00pm

Now that plans have been laid for populating Duncan and McMurtry colleges, the only thing left to do is build them. Last Friday, the Thresher and the college presidents toured the north college construction site, checking in on its progress and planning the transition. At the entrance to the main site trailer - actually seven trailers merged together due to space constraints on the site - posters reminded visitors that entry was prohibited without a hardhat and safety vest. Inside the trailer, the mood was more urgent as signs counted down to Orientation Week, the be all and end all deadline. A series of aerial photographs chronicled the progress and the transformation of the area from parking lots and trees to the nearly-finished buildings that stand there today.

"If you go out there now, it really starts to feel like a neighborhood," Facilities, Engineering and Planning Communications Manager Susann Glenn said.

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Walking out of the trailer, we were hit with a gust of construction dirt. As it settled, we could see Duncan's quad, with the bricks half on and the walls half up. Spencer Howard, assistant project manager for the north colleges site, showed us around the ground level.

"Unfortunately, we can't go upstairs, because there are no stairs yet," Glenn informed us.

The stairs at Duncan and McMurtry will not be installed until March or April, Howard said. But when they are, Glenn said she hopes to give tours to the Baker and Will Rice College students who will be living there next year.

Both colleges have a first-floor porch with electrical hookups. Howard said he hopes these porches will become social sites and one day host band concerts.

The two colleges will each have 87 double rooms and 150 single rooms, according to Baker President Chris Goldsberry. The rooms have a very bare feel: They will not be carpeted and their walls will be made of unpainted, polished stone. However, they will have the same furniture that the current colleges use, FE&P External Project Manager Ed Bailey said.

Compared to the dorm rooms, which are scarcely larger than a parking space, the new three-bedroom "enhanced RA" apartment at each college seems enormous. The enhanced description does not indicate a different role though, Howard emphasized. Rather, the apartment has an added third bedroom that Rice hopes will encourage families to move in. Still, Howard and the college presidents agreed that it was bigger than anything they'd ever lived in.

Stuck on the first floor, the "enhanced RA" - and those on the tour - miss out on the benefits of the building's extraordinary height. The fifth floor of both colleges will offer amazing views, Glenn said.

"You'll be able to see the Galleria from the fifth floor," Glenn said. "It'll be the penthouse suite one day, I'm sure."

That view will also feature a front yard - four stories up.

Both Duncan and McMurtry will be LEED-certified and have energy-efficient features such as green roofs - roofs with plants on them - water-saving flush toilets and efficient air conditioning that turns off when the window is opened. The construction space itself is environmentally friendly, with 95 percent of waste diverted from landfills. Furthermore, the bathrooms were installed pre-fabricated, which cut down their waste.

However, the "bathroom pods" that were put in may require additional explanation, Glenn said. Using multiple bathroom appliances at the same time could be difficult, Howard said, and the two flush options on the toilet might require an explanation ahead of time.

"We should get some bathroom pod education in the O-Week book," Glenn said. "So it's not a shock when the freshmen get there."

Though they have many similarities, the two colleges will not perfectly resemble each other, Howard said. Duncan College will have classroom space, whereas at McMurtry the space will be used for study rooms. Duncan will also have an Emergency Medical Services suite for an on-call student to stay in. The two colleges both have identical storage spaces, though they were labeled differently on the original drawings: Duncan's as "student storage" and McMurtry's as "Beer Bike storage." It was that superficial difference that was most important in assigning Baker and Will Rice to their colleges for next year.

"Will Rice saw 'Beer Bike' on the drawings and immediately said, 'We want that one!'" Goldsberry, a Baker senior, recalled.

However, in the updated plans, both are simply referred to as "storage."

"When the City of Houston saw 'Beer Bike,' they wanted to know where our liquor permit was," Howard said.

The two colleges will have different brick colors, one rose and one tan, though Howard described the two colors as complementary.

Additionally, Duncan's courtyard will be landscaped differently.

"Duncan's courtyard is more formal and planned," Howard said, with the trees' locations all carefully decided upon and a geometric fountain in the center. McMurtry's courtyard will have a more natural feel to it, he said. For now, though, the courtyards are nothing but construction dust.

Glenn said the different styles are a theme seen in the other buildings as well. Duncan will have a more geometric square commons, while McMurtry's will be circular. Both are still currently lacking their glass walls, however, and much of their exteriors.

Standing on the slab that will be the Duncan commons, there seems to be a long way to go. But Howard reminded the group that there was more to the structure than could be seen.

Like at the Raymond and Susan Brochstein Pavilion, all of the mechanical and electrical equipment for the commons are underground. Since the work has already reached ground level, a lot of progress has actually been made.

In order to prepare the space for the buildings, many thousands of dollars were spent moving trees out of the way, including one oak tree estimated to be over 100 years old, Howard said.

"If we can move it, we move it," Howard said. "But whether we are moving or removing, it takes a lot of planning."

With all of the trees that Rice has on campus, the few that were moved might seem a great effort for something commonplace, but Glenn said that a great effort was made to keep the trees because they contribute so much to Rice's history.

"There's a value to the campus tree canopy," Glenn said. "There's a lot of emotion [attached] to the trees also." She recalled the story of donors John and Anne Mullens (Hanszen '63 and Jones '64, respectively) who shared their first kiss under one of the trees in what is now the John and Anne Grove.

Many of the trees that couldn't be moved were left in place, with buildings planned around them. The Duncan master's house was completely redrawn to accommodate a distinctive tree, Howard said.

Additionally, the servery's placement among the fully-grown trees gives it a feeling of timelessness, Howard said.

"The servery has an amazing feeling now because it feels like it's been there forever surrounded by these old oak trees," Howard said.

Duncan and McMurtry will share a two-story servery. The floors will be modeled on the plan of the South Servery, with classrooms and gathering space upstairs.

The cooking equipment downstairs will be fairly standard, with one large exception.

"Housing and Dining bought themselves a pizza oven for Christmas," Howard told us. This bright-yellow oven will find a home in the shared servery.

"The whole [servery] is number-two pencil yellow," Howard said.

The Duncan-McMurtry servery will also have a north branch of the Rice Coffeehouse.

The servery already feels completed, with most of its walls and columns up. The glass walls on its face are missing, but it is easy to look out through the concrete and imagine them there.

The servery's progress is ironically attributable to delays posed by Hurricane Ike. When the hurricane hit in September, work had to be halted on both commons to assess the damage. While that assessment was taking place, more construction energy was focused on the servery.

However, Hurricane Ike did put servery construction a week behind schedule, and the commons are a month behind, though the masters' houses and colleges are still on schedule, Howard said.

The delay has led to worries from FE&P that tents may have to be put up during O-Week while the commons are completed, Howard said. At the same time, though, he reassured us all that the opening wouldn't be late.

"It's going to be finished by O-Week because it has to be," Howard said.

When that time comes, Baker and Will Rice will be ready to move in.

"I was really impressed by the tour," Goldsberry said afterwards. "I think they're going to be fantastic places to live next year."

However, Goldsberry said he was not convinced to give up Baker altogether.

"I'm partial to Baker, so I'm glad we're only going to be there a year," he said.

In order to make the introduction of the colleges less jarring for students, the tree-covered path around them will be reopened in stages, Howard said. The temporary gravel path winding around the construction site will become permanent and the land will be reclaimed by students.

Most iconically, the Virgin's Walk pathway will be replaced just yards from its original location.

"We saved all the lampposts from Virgin's Walk, with all of the dents in them," Howard said. "And we're putting them back."

"So we can still kick them?" Hanszen College President Abbie Ryan asked.

"We're expecting it," Howard said.

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