CORTLAND — SUNY Cortland says it will break ground during the spring semester on a major electrical-distribution system upgrade that will affect the majority of campus, The electrical-infrastructure work, which involves excavating and replacing distribution lines that date back more than 50 years, will likely start by late March, SUNY Cortland said in the Dec. […]
CORTLAND — SUNY Cortland says it will break ground during the spring semester on a major electrical-distribution system upgrade that will affect the majority of campus,
The electrical-infrastructure work, which involves excavating and replacing distribution lines that date back more than 50 years, will likely start by late March, SUNY Cortland said in the Dec. 2 edition of The Bulletin, its public relations e-newsletter. The project will continue through the summer.
“It’s a pretty substantial dig and it’s not something that can be neatly contained behind fences like the rest of our projects,” Rob Shutts, interim co-director of SUNY Cortland’s Facilities, Planning, Design and Construction Office, said in The Bulletin, referring to the electrical work.
The excavation involves digging two trenches — measuring roughly six to eight feet wide — from the south electrical substation near the university’s Route 281 entrance to the upper portion of campus that includes structures such as Miller Building and Old Main.
Those trenches will cut across campus, including a portion of the parking lots that service VanHoesen and Bowers halls and Old Main. Digging also will close Water Street next summer, SUNY Cortland said.
The targeted completion date for the excavation work is the start of the fall semester, but factors such as weather could push that back, according to Shutts.
SUNY Cortland said it expects that contractors will split up the work into increments of three to four days — digging first, laying pipe in the ground, pouring concrete, and then backfilling. Two crews will dig at any given time, meaning two sections of trenches will be open throughout the summer.
It’s the second phase of a larger, $26 million project to completely upgrade the SUNY Cortland campus electrical infrastructure.
“The wiring underground slowly has been deteriorating and shorting out, causing power outages over the past several years,” Shutts said in The Bulletin. “We’ve been lucky in that very few have happened while students were on campus… This part of the project should significantly improve our situation.”
The State University Construction Fund has allocated $9 million for the upcoming phase of construction, which involves putting the duct bank in the ground and reconnecting 11 buildings on the upper portion of SUNY Cortland’s campus. An earlier phase of the electrical project created a new primary south substation to handle the university’s entire electrical load. The third phase will connect the remaining buildings. SUNY Cortland anticipates completing that phase in 2016-17, pending funding from the State University Construction Fund.
Completing the entire upgrade will eliminate the need for a north electrical substation near SUNY Cortland’s heating plant, the university said.
Shutts said the electrical-infrastructure project was to go out to bid to contractors in early December, with their bids coming back early in 2015. And, work is slated to begin in March.