In the past 10 years, both the UW-Madison campus and the City Madison have seen some major renovations and already this year this summer will be no different.
One of the many projects currently underway on the UW-Madison campus is the new Ogg Residence Hall on the 800 block of North Park Street. The development—to be completed by the end of the coming summer—began last year to replace the current Ogg Hall. The new dorms will house 650 students in the fall and cost the university upward of $60 million for construction.
Ald. Eli Judge, District 8, said he is excited about the project, despite the hassle it may cause students.
“I think students will be duly impressed [with the construction] even though they’ll have to deal with the annoyance of having it go on all around them,” he said.
The UW-Madison business school will also see an added development in the next two years. An addition to Grainger Hall is currently under construction and set to be completed by this time next year. The cost of the project is estimated at $40 million, most of which was paid for through alumni donations.
The project that has created the biggest buzz on campus, however, is the new University Square. The project, replacing the old development of the same name, is currently under construction and will open in various stages over the next two years.
The development will feature underground commercial parking, two floors of commercial businesses, a private residence hall complete with a parking floor and a 10-story tower. The tower will house university offices such as UHS, the Bursar’s and Registrar’s offices and the UW-Madison student radio station.
UW-Madison facilities manager Alan Fish is as excited as the students are about the new University Square.
“I believe it will be very popular,” he said. “I’m particularly excited about getting the student health service right down in the lower campus.”
City and campus organizers are also taking on a massive development project this summer on the west side of campus.
The West Campus Utility Project, which began this month, features the large-scale reconstruction of facilities providing utilities to the buildings between Observatory Drive and Highland Avenue on Madison’s west side. The affected buildings include the American Family Children’s Hospital, the Clinical Science Facility and the Health Sciences Learning Center.
The plan will re-vamp the underground facilities that supply water, heat, drainage and electricity to the west campus area, as well as provide a backup system for utilities.
“We’re basically doing all the utility work that we believe we’ll need for the next 20 years in the next year-and-a-half,” Fish said.
