Construction on Bailey Hall began in January 2012 and will be completed by fall of 2014. This project will cost about $25 million, including architects’ fees, construction fees, furniture prices and other unspecified expenditures.
“[Bailey Hall] is going to be completely stripped down to just its steel structure,” said Dave Norton, Bailey Hall rehabilitation project manager. “The new building is going to be a tremendous improvement to what the old Bailey was.”
SWBR Architects designed the construction plans, and the new facility will adhere to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certifications. Although the building will not utilize rainwater harvesting or photovoltaic energy as originally planned, there will be newer, more efficient equipment incorporated into Bailey’s construction. The plan for its rehabilitation includes a feature that will reduce artificial lighting by utilizing natural sunlight as the ISC currently does.
The building will also feature brand new classrooms. Norton said that the classroom spaces in the old facility began to seem “old-looking” and that “chalkboards were okay 20 years ago, but with today’s technology, it doesn’t really serve our purpose.”
The internal architecture of the building will feature classrooms on one side of the building and department offices and conferences rooms on the other. This design was created with the intention of making departments more accessible to students.
According to Norton, Bailey Hall is currently undergoing the process of asbestos abatement. When this process is complete, construction will begin on the half of Bailey that faces the quad. Upon opening in 2014, Bailey Hall will house the psychology, anthropology, sociology and geography departments.