University of Utah to Expand Applied Sciences Building

The University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, is set to begin construction on renovations and additions to its applied sciences building. Work will start in early October and consist of renovating 40,000 square feet inside the William Stewart Building for Applied Sciences, as well as building a 100,000-square-foot addition on the building’s west side.

The building will play home to the Departments of Physics & Astronomy and Atmospheric Sciences, according to a news release, uniting students and faculty of aerospace, biotechnology, semiconductor technology, data science, air quality, and hazardous weather forecasting under one roof.

A news release reports that the new facility will offer a 56-percent increase in space for experimental and computer labs. The project comes with a price tag of about $84.6 million; of that, $60 million has been requested from the state, and the remainder will come from private funding. The university has already received donor commitments totaling $11 million.

One major impetus of the historic building’s renovation is the rising cost of maintenance issues, according to the university website. “[Maintenance] costs will only escalate and still barely stay ahead of their failing systems. The current state of these aging facilities and failing infrastructure places them in immediate crisis,” according to a 2018 Feasibility Study.

The university is partnering with DFCM Construction on the building’s construction. The new facility is scheduled to open its doors to students in August 2024.

About the Author

Matt Jones is senior editor of Spaces4Learning. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured

  • ed tech conference calendar

    Upcoming Awards, Events & Webinars

  • Deferred Maintenance Issues Growing at Universities, Gordian Reports

    U.S. colleges and universities are falling increasingly behind on facilities maintenance and repair, according to Gordian’s 13th annual State of Facilities in Higher Education report. The deferred capital renewal burden has reached $156 per gross square foot, an 8% increase over the previous year.

  • Myrtle Grove Elementary

    Phased Construction Keeps Students on Campus During Rebuild

    When Escambia County School District needed to replace most of Myrtle Grove Elementary School in Pensacola, Fla., it had three distinct challenges: honor the school's legacy in the community, bring state-of-the-art learning environments to the county, and be seamlessly built on the same site as the active school campus.

  • Chartwells Launches Campus Dining Evaluation Framework

    Contract food-service management provider Chartwells Higher Education recently announced the launch of BLUEPRINT, according to a news release. The evaluation framework was designed to provide a data-driven and customizable roadmap towards optimizing campus dining services and, by extension, the student experience.