November 18, 2005 -- The Board of Visitors’ Buildings and Grounds Committee approved the site and design guidelines for the expansion of the south chiller plant at its meeting on Nov. 7. The addition will bolster an existing chiller plant near Medical Research Building 4.

The $14 million plant will provide an additional 6,000 tons of chilled water to the Medical Center for air conditioning in new projects such as the Clinical Cancer Center, the Medical Education building, the nursing school building, the hospital bed expansion project and future hospital expansion.

The proposed building will be two story, set into the existing grade, with rooftop cooling towers. The chillers will be on the ground floor, with ancillary equipment on the second floor. The site, currently a parking lot, will be screened from other Medical Center facilities as well as the adjacent Fifeville neighborhood.

In an update on the South Lawn project, University Architect David J. Neuman told the committee the conceptual designs should be ready before the winter break and would be presented to the board in the spring. The South Lawn project includes new buildings that would be constructed in what is now the B-1 parking lot and a terrace spanning Jefferson Park Avenue that would link the two areas. The most favorable option currently calls for the terrace to be raised higher than it had been in previous plans, so the street would not have to be lowered, reducing costs and construction time. Some utilities may be run underneath JPA and others may run underneath the terrace.

The $105 million project is slated to start in 2007 and be completed in 2010.