If you’ve been traveling through campus on High Street recently, you’ve probably noticed an interesting building under construction at the corner of 18th Avenue, across from Buckeye Donuts. And, if you’ve looked to the west down Woodruff Avenue, you’ve probably seen a much larger building rising off in the distance.
The High Street building is the new East Regional Chilled Water Plant, which will provide chilled water to buildings on the east side of campus (the water is used to cool the buildings). University Architect Bernie Costantino explains that the new plant (along with McCracken Power Plant and the new South Regional Chiller Plant by the Medical Center) has the potential to reduce energy consumption by up to 30% since each individual building will no longer have to have its own cooling facilities.
Construction is scheduled to wrap up on the $25 million building sometime in early 2014, but there is another element to the project. The street network in the immediate vicinity of the building is being redesigned; a realization of plans first laid out in the One Ohio State Framework Plan.
18th Avenue, which currently allows access from High Street to the Arps parking garage but does not connect through to College Avenue and the main part of campus, will be reconnected. It will be two lanes, will run in two directions, and will be similar in scale to the recently-redesigned Woodruff Ave.
The new seven-story structure going up on Woodruff is the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Chemistry (CBEC) building. Scheduled to be completed by the end of 2014, the $126 million project will house new laboratories and lecture halls. It has been designed with its environmental impact in mind, adhering to the sustainable design guidelines of the Labs 21 program as well as the criteria necessary to achieve a LEED Silver certification.
More information can be found online at www.osu.edu/map/construction.php.
Renderings via OSU Facilities Operations and Development. Construction photos by Walker Evans.