Cornell North Campus Residential Expansion Construction Update, 10/2019

31 10 2019

I’ve been intended to do a formal introduction piece for Cornell’s enormous North Campus Residential Expansion, but the sheer breadth of it makes it an arduous task – I’ve estimated the full write-up will push about 10-12 pages, and it’s one of the reasons why the blog has gone quiet. For now, here are monthly photo updates from the site. For now, background reading and history can be found by reading the Voice archive here and here.

The sophomore village (Site 1) will have four residential buildings with 800 new beds and associated program space totaling 299,900 SF, and a 1,200 seat, 66,300 SF dining facility.This is being built on what was the CC Parking Lot and the former Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity on Sisson Place, now Northcross Road. All buildings in the sophomore village are in the City of Ithaca. The bounds of the sophomore village extend into the village of Cayuga Heights, but only the landscaping.

The freshman village (Site 2) will have three new residential buildings (spanning the City and Town line), with a total of 401,200 SF and 1,200 new beds and associated program space. Site Plan Review Documents indicate about 223,400 SF is in the City, and 177,800 SF is in the Town. At both sites, the buildings will be between two and six stories using a modern aesthetic. The project has an estimated price tag of $175 million and will result in the disturbance of about 25.6 acres at the two sites. The 250-page Site Plan Review (SPR) application can be found here, with supplemental reports here.

As previously noted, Cornell has grown substantially while its housing options have not. The application provides further insight by saying that one of the goals isn’t just to have housing available to 100% of freshman and sophomores, it’s to mandate they live on campus – currently, there is no requirement to live on campus, though freshmen are strongly urged to do so. 800 beds will be sophomores, 1,200 beds for freshmen, and 75 beds for live-in faculty, RAs and support staff. The growth in campus housing from 8,400 beds to 10,400 will also allow Cornell to address long-deferred maintenance to older residential halls and increase its undergraduate enrollment by another 900 (the current undergraduate enrollment is 14,900).

Water will come to the new dorms via Fall Creek and the Cornell filtration plant, sewer sustems will connect to joint city/town/village facilities, and the loss of 396 parking spaces is mitigated in part by the observation that the CC’s Lot inconvenient location and expensive parking permits meant only about 110 spaces were regularly used, and a surplus of parking in other North Campus parking lots means users will be assigned spaces nearby, with enough spaces left over for the few hundred additional vehicles 2,000 on-campus students may bring.

The dorms will tie into Cornell’s centralized energy system, which is primarily fed by the Cornell’s Combined Heat and Power Plant (CHP), which is powered primarily by natural gas and reuses waste heat, as well as an increasing set of renewable energy resources, like solar arrays and the lake source cooling program. Since the CHP system relies on natural gas as its primary energy source, it became a major source of contention during review. Cornell has stressed that more renewable sources are in the pipeline and the plan is to have all their energy be renewable by 2035, but that far-flung timeline has not been welcome news to many local environmental advocates.

The project falls in three municipalities and in three zoning districts: the U-I zoning district in the City in which the proposed 5 stories and 55 feet are allowed; the Low Density Residential District (LDR) in the Town, which allows for the proposed two-story residence halls (with a special permit); and the Multiple Housing District within Cayuga Heights, but only for landscaped areas. Technically, any one of six governmental bodies could have been lead agency – the city, the village, the town, the NYS Dormitory Authority, the Tompkins County Department of Health, or the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation. However, for the sake of coordination, the others consented to allowing the city to be Lead Agency for the project with decision-making authority on the environmental review, while offering their concurring critiques and subordinate reviews.

The buildings are being designed by ikon.5 Architects, the general contractor is Welliver of Montour Falls, and TWMLA is handling the landscape architecture. T.G. Miller is the civil engineer for the project, and Thornton Tomasetti is doing the structural engineering. Taitem Engineering served as an energy consultant for the project, which is pursuing LEED Gold Certification. Canadian firm WSP Global Inc. is in charge of the design of fire protection and mechanical/electrical/plumbing systems, and Ricca Design Studios will handle the interior design and fitting out of the food service areas within the new dining hall. SRF & Associates of Rochester did the traffic study, and John P. Stopen Engineering of Syracuse did the geotechnical work. Intergrated Acquisition and Development (IAD) is the co-developer (non-owner) with Cornell.

Since receiving approval in late June 2019, the project has progressed at a quick pace, with the sophomore village underway just a few weeks later. As of this week, the excavation work and concrete footer pours are already underway. Wood forms are in place to hold the concrete in place as it cures, and rebar, for structural strength, is ready for the pour, capped with orange plastic toppers for safety reasons. Underground utilities installations and excavation work are ongoing at the freshman village site, which started a little later in the fall.

Plans are to have the sophomore village open by August 2021, and the freshman village by August 2022. A project of this size will require a sizable number of workers. The project team expects that 75-100 construction workers will be employed at any one time, 140 on average, and 280 at peak construction periods. The new dorms would create 85-110 jobs after opening, mostly in maintenance and program support roles.

August 4th:

Freshman village site:

Exterior wall mock-up:

September 6th / Sophomore Village Only

 

October 27th: Freshman village

Sophomore village:

 


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119-125 College Avenue (College Townhouses) Construction Update, 12/2018

16 12 2018

The CMU (concrete masonry unit) elevator/stairwell cores are being assembled for Novarr and Proujansky’s Cornell visiting faculty and staff housing at 119-125 College Avenue. The North Building’s core tower is complete and capped with an American flag courtesy of Welliver (who are proudly displaying their involvement with Cornell’s North Campus Residential Initiative on their homepage, and is co-developed by Novarr and Proujansky). It’s kinda intuitive from the east tower, but workers work their way up along the inside, using the steel girder in the center. The plastic sheeting offers some basic weather protection as the cinder blocks are mortared and laid into place in a running bond pattern. These cores give an idea of how tall the finished buildings will be, though keep in mind the lowest exit/entry opening is the basement, which will be built out and backfilled up to ground level as construction progresses.

One of the reasons why the hot gossip swirls around Novarr’s Collegetown plans is that he enjoys a very close relationship to Cornell, so if the university determines it wants to do something Collegetown, they can turn to someone who has a lot of developable property and a strong relationship with the school. Rather than deal with the potentially damaging public blowback of a tax-exempt property, Novarr and Proujansky keep it on the tax rolls and create a welcome degree of separation. Most of their properties are fully taxed – the Breazzano, which serves an academic function rather than ancillary function like housing or student services, has a PILOT agreement for fifty years.

Apart from the excavated sites and elevator cores, the concrete foundation work (footers, slab pours, foundation walls) is ongoing, mostly at the south building. It doesn’t look like the north building is quite as far along, even though the elevator core is complete.

Project information and history can be found here.


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238 Linden Avenue Construction Update, 12/2018

14 12 2018

John Novarr and Phil Proujansky’s project at 238 Linden Avenue is moving right along. For an all-residential construction, this is a heavy-duty building. It uses a steel frame with steel stud walls and gypsum sheathing – unlike wood-framed structures that could go up in smoke, this building is designed to be durable and withstand and potential fire-related calamities. It may be related to the fire code issues that delayed the project?

It looks like the design is similar, but not exact to the renders below. While some of the rough window openings are still being carved out of the gypsum panels, it’s not the same fenestration pattern. The sunken rear courtyard remains – it will be nice during the summer, but every leaf in Collegetown will seem to find its way in there by November.

The 13,715 square-foot building, which will house 24 studios, is topped out but not yet fully framed. Corrugated steel decking is in place and some interior framing has occurred as well. Based off the demolition plan submitted for 325 College Avenue around the corner, the targeted completion date for this structure is sometime next summer – given it’s designed to serve Executive MBA students at the Breazzano next door, that makes good sense.

Briefly, to touch on that 325 College Avenue site – the rumor mill does not know what’s planned, but the only consistent detail is that it will not be student housing. The market is too weak, and many Collegetown landlords are holding off on projects until the impacts of Maplewood, and potentially Cornell’s North Campus, have been fully absorbed. It’s not a situation where anyone seems to be going bankrupt, but the big Collegetown players have taken a more conservative approach as a result of Cornell’s new housing. As to what they could plan other than student housing, we’ll see. Faculty/staff housing, a hotel, another Cornell-related institutional use…plenty of options.

A history and overall description of the 238 Linden Avenue project can be found here.


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238 Linden Avenue Construction Update, 7/2018

22 07 2018

Might be jumping the gun a bit on this, but the fence encroachment into the street, pile driving equipment and steel/caisson tube liners on site are leading me to believe this one is in site prep.

Consider this project thr second half of a 2-for-1 package deal from developer John Novarr. Novarr and his business partner, Phil Proujansky, own a fairly large and widespread set of local properties, with the massive Collegetown Terrace project being the best known ($190 million investment, 1,250+ beds, 16 acres). Most of the rentals operate under Novarr-Mackesey Property Management. Their latest development was on behalf of Cornell, the 76,000 SF Breazzano Family Center for Business Education, which was dedicated last fall, an imposing six-story building at 209-215 College Avenue in Collegetown.

When Novarr first bought the properties that would be demolished to make way for the Breazzano, he bought a ramshackle six-bedroom house at 238 Linden Avenue for $1.35 million – this was in December 2010, before he had assembled his final, full group of properties (and realized Pat Kraft was flatly not interested in selling to him, later doing his own redevelopment at 205-07 Dryden), so the purchase of 238 Linden could be seen as a secondary purchase to give room for flexibility, and a place for construction staging in the notoriously tight spaces of inner Collegetown. In its last few years, Novarr did not rent out the house, which was in poor shape and torn down in June 2015. A redevelopment was always intended at some point, through it was only as the Breazzano plans were drafted did Novarr and Proujansky settle on a concept.

Inner Collegetown is a captive rental market – regardless of economic recessions, there will always be students willing to pay a premium to live near Cornell’s campus. The Breazzano project presented a unique opportunity – the project will serve up to 420 Executive Education students, who tend to be older, deep-pocketed, and infrequent visitors to campus, coming up for a few weeks of the year.

The new 238 Linden is designed to tap those Executive Education students who might come up more frequently, or prefer to have a second place to call home during their matriculation with the Johnson School. The project is a 13,715 square-foot building with 24 efficiency units (studios). It will be 4 stories with a habitable basement, just under 50% lot coverage, and is fully compatible with the site’s CR-4 zoning.  Each fully above-ground floor will host 5 efficiency units, with four in the partially-exposed basement. While intended for Johnson Executive Education students, it does not appear it would have provisions limiting the units to E-MBAs.

The design intent was to create a townhouse-like appearance, in form if not in function. The exterior includes fiber cement panels to complement the colors of the Breazzano, aluminum windows and a glass curtain wall with energy-efficient glazing. A number of green features are included in the project, such as LED lighting, low-water plumbing fixtures, and a sophisticated VRF high-efficency HVAC system, which uses air-source heat pumps.

Plantings, walkways, steps and retaining walls are planned, with decorative entry stair bridges and little landscaped courtyards to provide a pleasing aesthetic for the basement units. As with all inner Collegetown projects, no parking is required so long as a transportation demand management plan (TDMP) is filed and approved by city planning staff. During Site Plan Review, the project cost was estimated to be about $2 million.

The project had a pretty quick trip through the planning board – it was proposed in March, there were very few suggested aesthetic changes, and since everything conforms with the size and intent of zoning, the board was pretty comfortable with the proposal. However, while it was approved in July 2017, the project was unable to move forward because of a change in state fire codes that essentially made construction along Linden Avenue illegal for any building taller than 30 feet (and 238 Linden is 45 feet tall), because Linden is too narrow. The way around this was to petition the city Board of Public Works to treat the parking space on the street in front as a loading zone, creating a “wider” street since a fire crew would no longer have to worry about parked cars along the street frontage. This made it easier for the project to obtain a fire code variance from the state. Normally, BPW would reject this, but 238 Linden and Visum Development’s 210 Linden had already been approved when the code was changed, so they got a special, rare accommodation. Suffice it to say, any other Linden project would be difficult if not impossible under the revised state fire code.

As with all of his other projects, the architect is ikon.5 of Princeton, with local firm Trowbridge Wolf Michaels Landscape Architecture serving as the project team representatives, and T.G. Miller P.C. providing the civil engineering work. The modern design may not be to everyone’s taste, but Novarr likes the architecture firm’s work so much, he asked them to design an addition to his property in Cayuga Heights. Beauty is in the eye of the wallet-holder. No word on who the general contractor will be, but Novarr has often turned to Welliver for his construction work. The original buildout period was estimated at ten months, so a plausible occupancy for 238 Linden would be complete by Summer 2019.


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