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SUNY Fredonia starts building $60M science center

Friday, September 9, 2011

Allissa Kline
Buffalo Business First Reporter - Business First

The most expensive capital project in SUNY Fredonia’s history is designed to better integrate the college’s science departments and enhance the reputation of its science programs.

Campus officials are scheduled to break ground today on the $60 million Science Center and expect it to open in 2014. The 92,000-square-foot building, set to be located on the southeast side of the campus, is central to the creation of a SUNY Fredonia Science Complex, officials said. It will be physically connected to Houghton Hall, one of two existing buildings that house Fredonia’s science programs.

Once completed, the Science Center will house the college’s biology and chemistry/biochemistry departments, plus its environmental science and science education programs. Some 400 students are enrolled in those programs, the college said.

“This is a very big deal for us,” Fredonia spokesperson Michael Barone said. “We’re always recognized for our excellence in music and the other performance arts, as well as for our education programs — and rightly so — but this new facility will really raise the bar and better position SUNY Fredonia in the minds of many relative to our significant capabilities in the sciences.”

The project is entirely funded by the state’s capital construction fund, Barone said.

Renovations at Houghton Hall will take place after the Science Center is completed. The building was constructed in 1969 and designed to house separate programs on separate floors. The new center includes more space flexibility and informal teaching areas. Houghton Hall will eventually house the physics, geosciences, mathematical sciences and computer and informational sciences departments.

SUNY Fredonia is also in the midst of renovating its student union, which is closed for the year, and it will build a new fitness center in Dods Hall, starting in May 2012. Also up for improvements: The Rockefeller Arts Center, whose expansion plans will be finalized in December, and more apartment-style housing between the softball and baseball fields.