New temporary-use building, Surge 1, will be used to house displaced offices

The new Surge 1 facility is located on Plantations Road. Photo by Karen Kunz

Cornell has created its first permanent, temporary-use office space to accommodate various campus offices, as needed. The new building to be used for that purpose is Surge 1, located near the entrance to Cornell Plantations on Plantations Road, off Forest Home Drive.

The first tenants in Surge 1 are two centers displaced when the north wing of Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, the home of the College of Human Ecology (CHE), was closed in July 2001 due to structural problems in the wing. The two centers, the Family Life Development Center and the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center, had been temporarily housed in the original Mann Library building.

"Surge 1 was designed to be very flexible so that it can continue to function as temporary space for units that are displaced due to renovations or that need short-term office space," said James T. Kazda, associate director of contract colleges facilities at Cornell. The two centers will return to the Martha Van Rensselaer complex when the new north wing is completed.

Kazda reports that the programming phase of the north wing is expected to be completed by early December. "This phase involves the future occupants of the building describing what they plan to do in their space so the architects can design the new building. They describe the furniture and equipment they use, their storage requirements, special building environmental needs and their adjacency requirements with others in the building and throughout the college," said Kazda.

The design phase for the new Martha Van Rensselaer wing will take about 18 months. "We are working on a parallel path in preparing contract documentation for the demolition of the existing building," Kazda said. "We are evaluating the possibility of accelerating the demolition. This means the north wing may come down as early as the summer of 2005, with construction of the replacement building scheduled to begin in the fall of 2005."