The Office of Capital Projects said UNM has seven construction projects underway on main campus, all set to be completed in October.
Will Turner, director of the Office of Capital Projects, said there are 23 construction projects have been approved on main campus.
“There’s more work out there to be done than we can ever finish,” he said. “We’re actually in a time frame where our workload is smaller than it has been in quite a while because of the economy.”
In addition to the seven projects that are under construction, seven others are in the final “closeout” phase, Turner said. With the exception the Castetter Hall addition, Turner said the current projects will be finished by October. Castetter Hall, on the other hand, will be completed in April 2011. The greenhouses that were previously on the ground near Castetter were moved to the hall’s roof. The building is being designed to support more biology research, and costs $9.9 million. The Science and Math building, projected at about $21.6 million, is going to be geared toward freshmen classes and focus on introductory math, biology, chemistry and earth and planetary sciences. It will have an auditorium and computer labs, according to OCP’s status report, and construction is set to finish Oct. 26. On all UNM campuses, including the branches, there are 85 proposed projects, with 20 in construction.
Turner said the cost for the work on main campus is $90 million, and for all campuses the total is $339.7 million, which includes the predicted costs of projects still in the planning phase. Turner said the state covers about 25 percent of all costs, and the University, individual donors and research grants pay for additional costs.
“A lot of what drives construction at UNM is research directed,” Turner said. “We are doing renovation of Logan Hall right now, and that’s based on the need to produce specific research space that has been funded by the NIH.”
Jake Morgan waits for the South Lot bus every day, and he said the University’s resources could be better spent elsewhere.
“I wonder why they’re putting so much money into buildings instead of education,” he said.
Turner said people don’t generally have problems with the work, because OCP tries to work around people’s schedules.
“There are occasions when our activities do impact people and we try to coordinate that,” Turner said. “(Power and water) shutdowns — we try to do that in time frames so it doesn’t affect anybody.”
