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Your Quick Guide to Six Emory Construction Projects

Remember the Doozers on Fraggle Rock? They were the little green fellas in hardhats whose entire mission in life was to build new constructions, day and night. If you didn't know better, you'd swear they'd taken over Emory while we weren't looking (whether that'd be adorable or a little alarming is a matter of opinion). After recently completing a new 305-student, first-year dorm called Raoul Hall and a new Candler School of Theology building (take a virtual tour, complete with heavenly music), Emory's army of cranes continues work on six other projects.

One of the most prominent projects is the new nine-story hospital tower on near Emory University Hospital (EUH) on Clifton Road. The J Wing expansion will add 210 beds, 500 underground parking spaces and 450,000 square feet of diagnostic and treatment spaces, ICU rooms and other facilities to the hospital. The building, next to the current Clinic Building B, will also house cancer and transplant patients, and is expected to be open in the first quarter of 2017. A new pedestrian bridge will connect the new building to the EUH, Emory Clinic and the Emory Winship Cancer Institute.

The new water reclamation facility (above) features a 2,000-square-foot hydroponic greenhouse with 1,200 square feet of outdoor tidal wetlands that can process 400,000 gallons of water a day. The processed wastewater will be not be used for drinking, but will, instead, be used in toilets and in steam and chiller plants, saving the university more than 100 million gallons of water a year, not to mention millions of dollars in utility costs. This one is coming along swimmingly (construction cam) and will be finished by the end of the year.

Emory is collaborating with Georgia Tech on a Library Services Center at Emory's Briarcliff property. The 55,000-square-foot building will house a "Harvard-style" high density archival facility that will be available to students at both universities. It should be finished by next November.


Emory's Atwood Chemistry Center is in the midst of getting about $52 million in renovations and additions (funded largely by the proceeds from an HIV-AIDS drug made in the building). A 70,000-square-foot, five-story addition will give budding young chemists more room for classes and research, while the 40,000-square-foot Atwood Hall is being renovated to provide updated teaching labs and office spaces. Construction should wrap up by May.


Levels 9 through 11 of the Woodruff Library are set to become the permanent home of the Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library (MARBL). The reconfigured levels will include reading rooms, enclosed balconies with skyline views, interactive exhibit spaces, high-tech classrooms and sunny gathering spots. Exterior walls will be removed on level 10 and most of the balcony space around the floor's perimeter will be enclosed with a new exterior glass curtain wall between the arched openings. Some balcony areas will be preserved for outdoor viewing spaces. The first phase was completed last year and the second phase is expected to be complete by next fall.

The new 55,000-square-foot, four-story science building being built on Emory's Oxford campus is classical in its design but contemporary in every other way with modern wet labs, faculty offices and collaboration spaces for biology, chemistry, geology, physics and astronomy students. The red brick building will have Georgia Lithonia granite touches to match the rest of the campus. Expected to achieve LEED Gold status, the $29 million project will also feature a greenhouse and gardens. This one is just getting started and isn't expected to open until spring 2016.

· New EUH bed tower scheduled to open in 2017 [Emory News Center]
[Images via Emory News Center]
· Construction projects advance university goals [Emory News Center]
[All images via Emory University and Emory University News Center.]

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