SUNY Cortland Plans Spring Semester Construction

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In addition to its electrical system upgrade, the College will install 16 tennis courts and two basketball courts beginning in the spring.

CORTLAND, NY (12/03/2014)(readMedia)-- Two SUNY Cortland construction projects are slated to break ground during the spring semester, including a major electrical distribution system upgrade that will impact the majority of campus.

The electrical infrastructure work, which involves excavating and replacing distribution lines that date back more than 50 years, likely will begin by late March. A tennis and basketball court renovation also will start in March.

Both projects will continue through the summer.

"It's a pretty substantial dig and it's not something that can be neatly contained behind fences like the rest of our projects," said Rob Shutts, the interim co-director of the College's Facilities, Planning, Design and Construction Office, referring to the electrical work.

The excavation means digging two trenches - measuring roughly six to eight feet wide - from the south electrical substation near the College's Route 281 entrance to the upper portion of campus that includes structures such as Miller Building and Old Main. Those trenches will cut across campus, including a portion of the parking lots that service VanHoesen and Bowers halls and Old Main. Digging also will close Water Street this summer and likely will impact car traffic briefly on Broadway Avenue.

The targeted completion date for the excavation work is the start of the fall semester, although factors such as weather could push that back, Shutts said.

The College anticipates that contractors will split up the work into increments of three to four days - digging first, laying pipe in the ground, pouring concrete and then backfilling. Two crews will dig at any given time, meaning two sections of trenches will be open throughout the summer.

It's the second phase of a larger, $26 million project to completely upgrade the campus electrical infrastructure.

"The wiring underground slowly has been deteriorating and shorting out, causing power outages over the past several years," Shutts said. "We've been lucky in that very few have happened while students were on campus ...

"This part of the project should significantly improve our situation."

The State University Construction Fund has allocated $9 million for the upcoming phase of construction, which involves putting the duct bank in the ground and reconnecting 11 buildings on the upper portion of SUNY Cortland's campus. An earlier phase of the electrical project resulted in a new primary south substation to handle the College's entire electrical load. The third phase will connect the remaining buildings. The College anticipates completion of that phase in 2016-17, pending funding from the State University Construction Fund.

When the entire upgrade is complete, the need for a north electrical substation near SUNY Cortland's heating plant will be eliminated.

Shutts said the electrical infrastructure project will go out to bid to contractors in early December, with their bids coming early in 2015 and work slated to begin in March. He will explain its impact in greater detail at the College President's Spring Opening Meeting in January.

The $2.5 million project to install 16 tennis courts and two basketball courts is expected to go out to bid in the early spring with a targeted completion of the fall semester. The courts, which are open to the community when competitions are not in session, will not be available for recreational use during the summer.

A 50-space parking lot to support the College's new Student Life Center also will be constructed as part of the tennis court project and will be located where the construction crew trailers now sit.

"We have a lot of people from the community who walk our campus regularly," Shutts said. "This spring and this summer, they're probably going to encounter construction that might disrupt their normal routine.

"We just want them to know that there's going to be a lot of activity on campus."

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