Now at the halfway mark, the conversion of a former convent into a new residence for ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ students is on schedule and within budget.

Most of the renovation action at 96 Campus Avenue is out of sight inside the building, but even so, the view from the street tells you more about the initiative’s progress nowadays than it would have a month ago.

For example, a certain blankness to the facade (similar to our first glance in the mirror each morning) indicates that most of the window units original to the 46-year-old building have been replaced with white plastic sheeting. Those plastic coverings, in turn, will be replaced by new permanent units by June.

You’ll also see earth-moving equipment that wasn’t there before. At ground level, the entrance drive and parking lot have been stripped down to dirt and a shallow trench gouged out along the left-hand side, near a road used by Facility Services.

Once it’s been deepened to about 4 feet, the trench will be used to run new connections for water, storm drainage, and gas up to the building. The water pipe was slated for placement this week, and the gas and storm drainage next week.

Last week, meanwhile, a new sewer pipe was also installed. But that pipe follows the same course as the original line, 12 feet under.

Brian Lanoie, the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ project manager in charge of the 96 Campus Avenue makeover, explained that the sewer replacement was achieved through a practice called “pipe-bursting.” You may think you know all about this technique from the episode when, in the innocence of youth, you flushed three bath towels down the toilet, but in fact the professionals’ method is a bit more sophisticated.

Consigli Construction has managed several major building projects at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝, including the conversion of 96 Campus Avenue, at right behind the site fence, into student housing. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

The rooms lining this third-floor corridor at 96 Campus Avenue were once home to nuns belonging to the SIsters of Charity order. By fall, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ students will be residing in them. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

Pavement has been removed from the 96 Campus Avenue parking lot in preparation for utilities work and then a reconfiguring of the lot and surroundings. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

Cement board lines the walls in a newly constructed third-floor restroom at 96 Campus Avenue. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

Tools, including a pair of drywall stilts, and supplies await the return of the person who’s applying joint compound in the student bedrooms being built in the former chapel at 96 Campus Avenue. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

As part of the 96 Campus Avenue renovation, the former loading bay is being transformed into the building’s main entrance. The new metal structure at bottom will support a raised flooring section incorporating an ADA-compliant ramp. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

In-wall utilities are all but complete in the student laundry room at 96 Campus Avenue. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

This student bedroom on the third floor of 96 Campus Avenue catches early-morning sun. On the pallet are tiles for the new restrooms. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

In pipe-bursting, a so-called bullet is pulled by a cable through the old pipe (in this case, made of PVC). The bullet’s diameter exceeds the pipe’s, so it fractures the pipe, making way for the replacement, which is drawn along behind the bullet. Ergo, only one pass is needed to dispose of the old pipe and put the new in place — and all without needing to dig a trench along the whole pipe run (although small digs are needed to situate the replacement pipe and bullet for installation). 

In the case of the 96 Campus Avenue line, there was an especially good reason to avoid a deep trench: an electrical transformer on the ground near the sewer path. “The problem is that (the path) crosses the high-voltage lines that feed the transformer as well as other utilities under here,” Lanoie said.

“They didn’t want to risk compromising any of those utilities. One of the options that we talked about was relining the pipe already in place, but we decided that we really would rather have it replaced if at all possible.”

Something else that needs to happen before the parking lot and other hardscaping can be completed is the placement of large HVAC machines on the building’s roof. A crane and crew from a familiar source, Cote Corp. of Auburn, will do the heavy lifting, scheduled for May 10.

Cote will need to deliver the equipment before the parking lot is paved, as their heavy equipment could damage new asphalt.

The two rooftop machines, as well as some water heaters that are bound for the basement, have been in Cote’s hands for a while, says Lanoie. This has been a comfort in light of other projects — not just at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ — that have been deranged because the delivery of crucial components was stalled by kinks in the supply chain.

Inside the building, the third and topmost level is the furthest along. In fact, with wall-boarding all but complete, painters have begun priming many of the residential rooms. At the same time, workers for the Paul White Co. of Portland are in the shower rooms waterproofing subfloors prior to tiling and installing the shower-stall bases, aka pans.

In the race among the floor levels toward completion, the second floor is still in second place. That’s by design, but it’s also true that the objectives on that level are more complex. The laundry room for student use is on that floor, necessitating a certain density of electrical and plumbing connections. (The apartment for the residence director, one story down, will have its own laundry facilities.)

The second level, too, was the location of the chapel used by the nuns of the Sisters of Charity order who were the building’s original occupants. Drywall installers have been busy subdividing that formerly open space into student quarters.

And what about the first floor? Simply because so many different building facilities and functions will be concentrated there, that level is the buzzingest part of the 96 Campus Avenue beehive. Lanoie told us that “every possible (building) trade is on site right now,” and there was evidence of nearly all of them on that one floor.

At one point, with designated walkways occupied by people doing actual work, we found ourselves twisting and turning cautiously through gaps in the metal wall framing to get where we were going. This was in a section of the first level, toward the back of the building, that’s both where the residence director’s apartment is being built and where utility feeds are routed upstairs from the basement. 

The first floor is also the focus of project news. One new development is the decision, because of issues with the structural slab that supports much of the building, to build the custodial room on the first floor instead of the basement. “So now in the lower level, we have no program space at all. It’s a lot of spare rooms that will be used for something in the future, but really it’ll just be maintenance folks that will need to go down there.”

Finally, a way was found to add another single room to the first-floor layout near the Campus Avenue end of the building. That will raise the total capacity of the finished residence to 65 beds. 

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes your questions and comments about current, past, prospective, and unlikely construction projects at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝. With “Campus Construction” or “Is that what they call throwing in the towel?“ in the subject line, please send your thoughts to dhubley@bates.edu.

Doug Hubley is a writer and musician living in Portland, Maine.

With the demolition phase finished more than a month ago, the ongoing work to convert 96 Campus Avenue to student housing is all about creation and renewal. This not only makes for nicer construction photos (we can only hope), but is more spiritually nourishing, as befits a project involving a former convent.

There have been a few changes in the scope of the project since we last visited the three-story building at the far side of the Campus Avenue Field. The biggest news is the decision to replace all the window units, which are original to the 1977 structure. This makes sense in terms of both tightening up the building envelope and consolidating construction activities at the site. 

When the 96 Campus Avenue makeover is complete, these north-facing windows will show Merrill Gym and its adjacent woods. This room will become a lounge in the new student residence. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

A three-quarter view of 96 Campus Avenue from the street. Concealed behind the construction site fence is the former main entrance. CCU was interested to see that in a first for a construction project at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝, management firm Consigli Construction eschewed the forest green that was its longtime choice for fence fabric in favor of a red similar to its corporate color. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

Field notes for the installation of a water-bottle filler. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

This first-floor space at the north end of 96 Campus Avenue is being redone as a building-wide student lounge. The second and third floors will also feature much smaller, more-casual seating areas. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

Cables for data, electrical service, and other uses form a tangle near the ceiling on the first story of 96 Campus Avenue. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

Electronic components are just hanging out in a wall under construction on the first floor of 96 Campus Avenue. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

Shown with wall studs in place and connections for plumbing and electrical nearly complete, the student laundry room at 96 Campus Avenue will sport three each of washers and dryers. Its western view from the second floor will give students something to gaze at while the machines are spinning. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

At least one more data conduit will relieve the pressure on the jam-packed pair protruding from the basement ceiling. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

This view shows the northern end of 96 Campus Avenue, including the loading area that will be reconfigured into a new main entrance, at center. The “#LewistonStrong” banner was hung in a gesture of moral support after the shootings in Lewiston last October. (Doug Hubley/ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College)

“The window decision was a major win for the project,” ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ Project Manager Brian Lanoie explained during our March 18 visit. Consigli Construction, the company managing the project for the college, “was able to put that into their schedule, get that subcontractor under contract, and get the windows ordered.”

That subcontractor is the Lewiston firm Jr’s Glass and Windows — for you Dallas fans, that’s “Jr” as in “junior,” not “J.R.”

The other two changes in the overall plan both involve location-swapping, plumbing, and the first floor. One switcheroo involves the sites of the bathroom in the residence director’s apartment and a recycling room. The routing of primary electrical conduits from the basement would have conflicted with the bathroom plumbing, so those two facilities have changed places.

The second swap relates to the fact that the 96 Campus Avenue basement is only partial: Much of the building, instead, rests on a concrete slab on grade. That foot-deep slab is topped with a layer of gravel, and then there’s a 4-inch floor slab over that. This arrangement, especially the deep structural slab, would make the placement of plumbing impractical, necessitating the relocation of a restroom to a location TBA. 

In the meantime, as Lanoie explained, current construction priorities largely involve walls: framing them out, placing utility feeds like plumbing and electrical inside the frames, getting those feeds inspected by the city, and, finally, closing up the walls.

Following a standard practice for comprehensive construction projects, Consigli is emphasizing a top-down work flow — so the third and topmost floor is the furthest along. At the risk of oversimplifying (otherwise we’d never get anything written), the idea is for the construction team to work its way out of the building. This approach has many practical benefits, including a way forward in case there should be a serious snag in the project.

To meet its residential demand in 2024–25, Lanoie explained, the college needs to have floors two and three complete by the start of school. So planning for 96 Campus Avenue includes a way to house students in the building even while isolating them from continuing construction on the ground floor— should that drastic eventuality occur, which is highly unlikely.

Anyhoo, right now the goal is to have all the third-floor walls closed up by the end of the month. So on that floor we saw some newly enclosed walls, a lot of completed or in-progress MEP installations (mechanical, electrical, plumbing), and pretty much all of the metal wall studs that need to be there.

“The framers screamed through the building,” Lanoie said (giving our ears something to contemplate). “They were in and out very fast.” He estimated that wall framing throughout the building was 90 percent complete. Handling both the framing and the wallboarding is the firm H.J. Gleason of Oakland, Maine.

Wall painting on the third floor should be in progress by mid-April.

Not surprisingly, the second floor looked like the third but not as far along — and with a major distinction in the form of what started out as the Sisters of Charity convent’s chapel, a large space now being rapidly portioned into student singles and doubles.

The first floor remains in the deepest state of flux, thanks not only to its rank in the order of progress but to a floor plan substantially more complex than the upper stories’. In addition to student rooms, it will feature the residence director’s apartment and a large lounge equipped with a kitchenette. 

Looking beyond the push to install MEP and build walls, here are some other construction highlights at 96 Campus during the next month or so: 

• Metal stair railings, already evident in a few spots, will continue to replace the old blond-wood numbers;
• Sprinkler modifications will continue;
• The removal of window units will begin;
• HVAC mechanical equipment will be installed on the roof.

Lanoie mentioned that, even this early in the project, decisions are being made about furnishings for 96 Campus Avenue. (“It’s later than you think” is especially true in the construction game.) The Portland, Maine, office of the vendor, the regional company Creative Office Resources, hauled seating samples to the Moody Room, a conference room high atop Pettengill Hall, a few weeks ago for students and Residence Life staff to try out.

“We were able to narrow down options for lounge seating and soft seating, and the next step is to take the narrowed-down list and review those again.” He added that Creative Office Resources is “telling us that it’s a six- to eight-week lead time for the options that we are looking at, so we’re in good shape for that.”

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update loves to hear from you. Please send questions, comments, and inflammatory speculation about construction at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ College to dhubley@bates.edu, with “Campus Construction” or “I know exactly how late it is” in the subject line.

ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝â€™ latest student residence will open in August in a former convent.

The three-story brick building at 96 Campus Ave., built in 1977 to house some 30 nuns in the Society of the Sisters of Charity order, will provide accessible accommodations for 64 ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ students and a live-in ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ staff member. (The student bed count was increased to 65 during the spring. — Editor)

ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ purchased the building from St. Mary’s Health System in 2021. Late last September the college decided to convert the structure, adjacent to Campus Avenue Field, from offices into a student residence. 

Designing the renovation “was probably the fastest project I’ve ever done,” says Sean Landry, head of the design team for the ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ project at . Landry, a managing principal, leads the higher-education studio at the firm, which has offices in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.

“But it was good,” he says. “Everybody knew what we were up against, so it made us all really efficient in decision-making. We didn’t have time to really noodle on things too long. So we all came together…and came to conclusions pretty quick. It was a neat process in that regard.”

He notes that Lavallee | Brensinger was originally studying a renovation that would have continued the building’s role as office space. “But ultimately it came down to ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ needing beds. That is their highest and biggest need, so we quickly pivoted to it being a residence hall.” 

In November, Landry and his team conducted workshops on campus, trying “to get through what the needs were.” By mid-December, the firm had provided permit drawings and construction documents that Consigli Construction, which is managing construction of the project for ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝, could put out for bid — “incredibly fast,” says Landry.

This is the first collaboration between ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ and Lavallee | Brensinger. has managed major construction projects for ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ for years.

The new renovation will give ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ added flexibility in managing residential facilities and facilitate the ongoing process of modernizing the college’s housing stock. As Geoff Swift, vice president of finance and administration, stated in announcing the project, the renovation will “support the fluctuations we regularly experience in class size, and allow us to take existing residences out of service for needed repairs in future years.”

Given the building’s original purpose as a group residence, only a light renovation is needed — “light” compared to such recent campus construction projects as the construction of the Bonney Science Center and the makeovers of Chase and Dana halls, anyway.

“A lot of the bedrooms, we’re trying to change as little as we can,” Landry says. “The building itself has really good bones — a lot of concrete block, which is great for a dorm building. It’s not always the most attractive material, but it’s durable. So, generally speaking, the existing room setup works well.”

“The biggest change, I would say, was what we’re doing with the restrooms. We needed a lot more bathrooms and fixtures. And bringing it into today’s standards for a college student, we were able to make a lot of individualized restrooms for privacy.

“That was really important to ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ and to us. That maybe was the biggest challenge, creating all new cores” — areas where plumbing and other utilities are concentrated — “in the building to accommodate individual restrooms and a lot more of them,” as well as showers.

Other major changes will include the remaking of a service entrance into a main entrance, installation of new utility connections and HVAC machinery, and the addition of lounges and dorm rooms for students, along with an apartment for a staff residence director.

“It needs to feel home-like, needs to feel welcoming, so those are things that we do” in designing student accommodations,” Landry continues. “We also want to build community, so community spaces are really important. A lot of your best relationships are made in a residence hall, so making those spaces special is something that we focus on.”

Of course, new finishes, fittings, and fixtures will prevail throughout the building. Exterior work will be confined to a few spots, including the new main entrance, but landscaping will include an updated parking lot and a new walkway to the relocated primary entrance.

Demolition has been underway all winter and was expected to wrap up by Feb. 16. 

Brian Lanoie, ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ project manager, took us through the building last week. With the street-side entry temporarily closed, we walked in through the main-entrance-to-be — a brick annex, with person- and vehicle-sized doors, that had been a loading dock. Facing Campus Avenue Field and John Bertram Hall, this feature will be spiffed up with new doors, a lot of glass, some furnishings, and a ramp for accessibility. 

Undertaken by PBC Environmental of Kittery, Maine, demolition was nearing its conclusion when we walked through. But many walls were left intact. Instead, the ceilings showed the most evidence of PBC’s efforts, with tangles of cable and conduits drooping over the hallways and crumbled plaster from popcorn veneers awaiting someone with a broom.

With one major exception, the layouts of the second and third floors resemble each other, and the renovation won’t change that. Long residential corridors comprise most of that common footprint, and on each floor showers and restrooms will replace some individual rooms. Small common areas with comfy seating and monitors will go into the corridors at the ends farthest from the avenue. 

And what of that big disparity between the two floors that we mentioned above? On the second floor, nearest Campus Avenue, there’s a large, high, sunlit chamber that was once the convent’s chapel (complete with organ, according to a 1976 Lewiston Daily Sun article announcing plans for the convent). That lofty space will be partitioned into single and double student rooms whose lucky occupants will enjoy 12-foot ceilings.

The first floor will house the fewest students — 14, contrasted with 29 for the second floor and 21 for the third. But the first floor will also contain the apartment for a Residence Life and Health Education staff member, with two bedrooms, full kitchen, and laundry facilities. Adjacent to the resident staffer’s flat will be the dorm’s primary lounge, a generously sized area equipped with ping-pong table, soft seating, and kitchenette.

ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ used 96 Campus Ave. for isolation housing during COVID, and Student Affairs staff and student organizations later occupied the building while Chase Hall was closed for its 2022–2023 renovation.

And its pre-ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝ history? The Sisters of Charity needed housing for the nuns who worked at St. Mary’s General Hospital and the affiliated Marcotte Nursing Home, thereby “continuing a mission of service (the order) began in 1878 in Lewiston,” according to a Sun Journal announcement of the current project.  

After the nuns moved out (when that took place is not clear), the hospital shifted other services to 96 Campus and also provided space there for the YMCA of Auburn-Lewiston’s Daisy Garden Childcare Center.

The March 1976 Lewiston Daily Sun article announcing plans for the convent offers more detail, reporting that sisters working at St. Mary’s and Marcotte were currently living either at the nursing home “or in a tiny rectory next to the proposed construction site.”

“Situated diagonally on the Campus Avenue lot, the (planned) 195-foot-long structure will be shaped roughly like a cross,” the newspaper reported. “The front wall will be accented by a stained-glass, cross-shaped window.“ (The horizontal bar on that original cross has been bricked in, leaving a skinny vertical window.) 

Sisters of Charity Regional Superior Sister Roseline Lessard told the Sun back then that the order, based in Canada and also known as the Grey Nuns, had “long planned to build a New England home for retired American nuns. The new facility will also house the order’s regional administration offices and a two-story chapel.”

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes queries and comments about current, past, future, and aspirational construction at ŔÖ˛Ą´«Ă˝. Write to dhubley@bates.edu, putting “Campus Construction” or “Do movie theaters ever have popcorn ceilings?” in the subject line.