A planned renovation to Palmer Auditorium and Castle Court remains in its preliminary stages while the anticipated completion date has been pushed from 2020 to Fall 2021. According to Vice President of Finance and Administration Richard Madonna, “no final decisions have been made” regarding facility and construction details of the expected 18 month project. He says to get to that point, the College will conduct a full programing study to gain an understanding of how a renovation could best accommodate faculty, staff, and students.
The College first announced renovation plans in Spring 2018 after receiving two seperate $10 million gifts towards the improvement of the Palmer and Castle Court spaces. At the time, the College released renderings of what it envisioned the space to look like, but Madonna says these were conceptual, not final.
Palmer will likely remain open until January 2020 when heavy construction is expected to begin. At that point, Madonna says the College will need to utilize a “swing space” for activities that Palmer normally hosts. Madonna says it is unlikely that parts of Palmer would remain open during the construction phase.
It is unclear exactly what Palmer will house in its new and improved state in 2021. The specifications of this are “still up in the air,” according to Madonna. The building is advertised to house the dance, theater, and music departments after the renovation. Currently, these departments are spread across multiple locations on campus. Madonna notes that dance, for instance, “has some great space in Cro with sprung floors” right now. This is something the College is thinking about as it also ponders a Cro renovation– how will these newly renovated buildings fit together? How will spaces be distributed efficiently and equitably to departments and student needs? This is largely where the input of faculty, staff, and students is valuable for the College. By spring break, Madonna hopes to have a clearer picture of how the new Palmer will be utilized. This also includes how the renovations may impact the use of space in Cummings.
Overseeing the Palmer renovation is a “core project team,” as worded by Madonna. This team consists of Madonna himself, Trina Learned, the Associate Vice President of Facilities Management and Campus Learning, David Jaffe, professor of Theater, Jeffrey Cole, Dean of Faculty, as well as President Bergeron. Additionally, Rob Richter and the team who operates the Palmer space will have heavy involvement in the project, along with other faculty, staff, and students. The Core Project Team communicates and works with the architecture firm in charge of the renovation, Ennead, as well as members of the campus community. Madonna reports that the team will dedicate around two hours worth of their work time in bi-weekly meetings to discuss the project. As the project advances, these meetings will likely become weekly– a transition that was similarly made with the creation of the Walter Commons last academic year.
Choosing Ennead as the firm to handle this project was a long process, but Madonna believes the College has found “that synergy” through working with Ennead thus far. The College published a request for proposal (RFP), to which various firms responded. The project’s Core Team conducted interviews and eventually chose Ennead as the firm to tackle the project. Madonna noted that the Core Project Team heavily took into consideration both the resume of the firm as well as how the firm was going to relate to the campus and contribute to the environment. The firm is responsible for many other structures on college campuses, including academic buildings at Vassar College, Stanford University, University of Oregon, and Yale University. Ennead is responsible for Carnegie Hall as well.
The College is also working with Colliers, an international real estate services and investment management company, whoose employees are serving as the project managers and will handle logistics of the Palmer project. In regards to finances, there is almost always a “wish list,” according to Madonna, that goes into these types of projects. There are features and changes faculty, staff and students often wish to see, but applying these is not always attainable or necessarily beneficial to the renovation of a space. These processes require comprise in the planning stages. This being said, Madonna is “confident that we will live within that $20 million budget and have a terrific project at the end.” This reportedly remains an important priority for the College. It is difficult to say now as to what these comprises might be because the project is still in preliminary planning and design stages.
The Sherman Fairchild Foundation provided a $10 million grant to the College, and a gift of $10 million was received from Nancy Marshall Athey ‘72 and Preston Athey. Neither donors have a say in the specifications for how this money is used. However, the $20 million is restricted money in that it cannot be used for something else at the College.
In addition to the use of the Palmer space, there are hopes to reconstruct Palmer with long-term energy efficiency and sustainability in mind. The College is looking into how to implement sustainable heating and cooling solutions, potentially using geothermal wells, including expanding the geothermal wells that currently exist outside of New London hall. Says Madonna, “we are really concerned about the environmental impact and future energy use of the space.” In talks about energy projects regarding the new center for the arts, the Office of Sustainability is at the table and an active participant in discussion.
The progress on the Palmer renovation is happening as the College continues to work on other long-term projects highlighted in the master plan, including Cro, Bill Hall, Athletics facilities, and residence halls and dining spaces. These additional projects will all be ones the school fundraises for. Madonna expects each of these projects to cost an estimated $10-$25 million. The College is also planning to announce plans for a new career center located on the main campus this Wednesday.
Madonna is excited for the Palmer renovations to continue to progress towards the final product because Palmer “brings students together,” and he wants to “see that space activated more regularly.”•
