Taken by Judith Marden ’66 from an ultralight aircraft piloted by Mike Theriault on Oct. 12, 2015, this campus view shows the L-shaped Campus Life Project dorms at center. (Judith Marden ’66 for 乐播传媒 College)

An action-packed hour spent the other day with Chris Streifel, project manager for Facility Services and 乐播传媒’ point person on the Campus Life residential project, afforded some insight into the multifaceted work that 乐播传媒 project managers do.

A lounge, complete with fireplace, will occupy this first-floor space in 55 Campus Ave., photographed Oct. 20, 2015. (Doug Hubley/乐播传媒 College)

Two facets specifically: How Streifel interprets this major construction project for different 乐播传媒 constituencies (including Campus Construction Update readers).

And, more important and more intriguing, how Streifel and his Facility Services peers represent 乐播传媒’ interests when complex decisions must be made in the field.

Photographed Oct. 20, 2015, this greenly insulated first-floor space at 55 Campus Ave. will be a game room. (Doug Hubley/乐播传媒 College)

Streifel met CCU on Bardwell Street around noon Tuesday in front of the portable office occupied by staff from Consigli Construction, which manages the Campus Life Project work for 乐播传媒.

With the 乐播传媒 Board of Trustees scheduled to meet on campus later in the week, Streifel gave us a preview of the tour he was planning for that august group.

We began at 55 Campus Ave. 鈥� Campus Construction Update’s first visit inside the building, which is the virtual twin of 65 Campus and, by design, is a few weeks behind its sibling in the construction process. While the ground floor of 55 is still an undivided expense of exposed and unfinished building innards, Streifel walked us through spaces that in about a year will be buzzing with the electricity of student life.

Facing north toward Campus Avenue and east toward 65 Campus, an L-shaped lounge area will sport comfy furniture, a natural gas fireplace and a “laptop bar” facing out through a glass wall. A kitchen island, whose future space is currently occupied by an island of stockpiled metal wall studs, and a game room will occupy the rear of building, adjacent to a wing of dorm rooms.

Another view of the entrance lounge at 55 Campus Ave. A fireplace will be installed just past the large window opening. (Doug Hubley/乐播传媒 College)

Back outdoors, looking more (Streifel) or less (CCU) like we belonged there in our hard hats and reflective-chartreuse visibility vests, required on the work sites, we watched bricklayers at work on a long eastern wall of No. 55. That’s the third wall on that building, out of six, that Maine Masonry has gotten to, compared with No. 65, where last week masons began work on the next-to-last wall, facing Central Avenue.

We took a quick look at the wall-treatment mockup in front of 55, where Streifel pointed out an instance of how the mockup had served its purpose: One masonry product on the the mockup, a concrete paneling called Taktl, had become bleached out when a mason practice-washed the bricks above it. Lesson: Wash the bricks before the Taktl goes up.

Plenty of bricks have been washed over at 65 Campus, and there’s plenty of Taktl in place, a textured material mounted on metal frames and colored the charcoal gray that has become standard in the 乐播传媒 architectural palette in recent years.

In other realms of exterior progress, many of the window units that arrived during the first week of October have been installed, looking natty with Taktl accents underneath. And workers for Industrial Roofing have gotten most of the several layers of the roofing sandwich in place 鈥� different types of board, insulation, and water and air barriers 鈥� and will soon start topping it off with asphalt shingles.

The stack of metal wall studs marks the approximate location of a kitchen island in a student lounge at 55 Campus Ave. (Doug Hubley/乐播传媒 College)

One gets from one Campus Avenue construction site to the other by crossing Franklin Street. On Tuesday, the street was graded dirt, with new pavement coming in the near future. “We did so much work underground there, and it was in poor condition to begin with,” Streifel said, that closing the street for a few days to repave it was a no-brainer.

Moreover, as part of the Campus Life Project plan, the stretch of Franklin closest to Campus Avenue was made narrower at the same time. “We eliminated the parking lanes on each side, so it’s now just the width of two traffic lanes.”

Because No. 65 will house the College Store and Office Services, both of which will be open to the public, the building’s ground floor will differ from No. 55. Through entrances on Campus Avenue and at the corner of Campus and Central, you’ll walk into a reception area connecting to the store through a portal that will be locked outside business hours.

This image taken Oct. 20, 2015, shows contrasting masonry surfaces on a west wall of 65 Campus Ave.: brick and the rugged concrete paneling called Taktl. (Doug Hubley/乐播传媒 College)

The store’s big windows will face Campus Avenue, and Office Services will look out on Central Avenue. Office Services will be reachable both through the store and a separate entrance, and will have its own lobby.

We headed upstairs, planning to check out dorm rooms, whose progress ranges from bare studs to new paint; the new subway-style wall tiles that have been finished in certain bathrooms; and a fourth-floor lounge that will have an awesome view once glass has replaced the plastic in the windows.

And then Streifel’s phone rang: He was needed to settle a question.

While Campus Construction Update roamed the fourth floor in an ecstasy of photographing subway tiles and coils of electrical cable (shiny!), Streifel met in a single dorm room with a city electrical inspector and with representatives from Consigli, project designer Ann Beha Architects, and the project’s electrical subcontractor, Lewiston-based DeBlois Electric.

The question involved the placement of the four electrical outlets that will equip each of the single dorm rooms.

While that placement had recently been finalized, following a decision about the standard furniture arrangement in the singles, some outlets had been installed prior to that determination and not conforming to it. Hence the fourth-floor confab.

Project manager Chris Streifel, photographed during the June 19 topping-off ceremony that marked the end of structural steelwork on the Campus Life Project dorms. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

“We had to figure out how to best realign what we want without completely redoing all the work that’s in place,” Streifel said, “trying to salvage the work that’s in place, and not create additional cost and time constraints for the contractor.”

In the end, it was an easy resolution: One outlet per room would be moved.

“The architect is the authority on this,” Streifel said, but “if we have a specific idea for these outlets that may be different from what they’d envisioned, then they’re usually going to defer to us, provided that we’re not violating any codes or any design issues that they see as important.”

Complete with natty charcoal-gray Taktl inserts, a third-story row of dorm-room window units had been installed at 65 Campus Ave. by Oct. 16, 2015. (Doug Hubley/乐播传媒 College)

He continued, “In this case we inserted ourselves into the conversation to make sure that we got what we needed. They’re trying to build the beautiful, functional buildings that 乐播传媒 wants. And so I’m representing 乐播传媒 in the field, and conveying our desires and intentions.

When questions arise or design changes are needed, “Everybody’s looking for 乐播传媒 to approve the plans and decisions that are being made in the field.”

Industrial Roofing Corp. technicians roll a fabric barrier out over oriented-strand panels at 65 Campus Ave. on Oct. 8, 2015. (Doug Hubley/乐播传媒 College)

But in the real world there will be questions, and it’s the project manager’s job to address them in a way that best serves several, and sometimes conflicting, interests, from student needs to the college’s costs, from the realities of a timetable to the needs of the maintenance and custodial staff who will keep the buildings in shape.

“You have to weigh all of those,” he says. “In this case, it was just trying to figure out how to give the students the most flexible electrical power options” 鈥� no small thing in this wired, wired world.

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes queries and comments about current, past, future, and imaginary construction at 乐播传媒. Write to dhubley@bates.edu, putting 鈥淐ampus Construction鈥� or 鈥淪hiny!” in the subject line. Or use the comments system below.

The Grape Wall: Photographed Oct. 20, 2015, the south wall at 55 Campus Ave. is still naked purple wallboard. (Doug Hubley/乐播传媒 College)

If you want a hint as to why 乐播传媒 will eliminate student mailboxes, look no further than the example of Noah Morasch鈥檚 coffee cake.

Morasch, a first-year student from Vancouver, texted his mom on a recent Sunday asking if she鈥檇 bake him a coffee cake.

Using the old family recipe, 鈥淎unt Babe’s Super Special Coffee Cake,鈥� Lisa Morasch baked the cake Sunday and shipped it Monday. It arrived Wednesday.

After an auto-generated 乐播传媒 email informed Noah that 鈥測ou have a package ticket in your mailbox,” he visited his Chase Hall mailbox to pick up the yellow ticket, which he used to claim the cake at the college’s Package Center.

Noah鈥檚 mailbox, you’ll notice, was barely a bit player in this transcontinental transaction. He used it only to retrieve the package ticket. The actual package, his ultimate destination, was a few hundred steps away at the Package Center.

Getting a letter was the big thing a generation or two ago. Now, it’s packages, which is why 乐播传媒 will phase out its physical mailboxes by 2016. (Photograph courtesy of the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

That’s the point, says Laurie Henderson, director of 乐播传媒 Office Services. “From what we know of our students, we see no downside of getting rid of mailboxes.”

By 2016, perhaps sooner, 乐播传媒 students will still have mailbox numbers, but no physical boxes.

2016 is when Office Services will pack up its shipping, print and package operations, now spread across Chase and Lane halls, and consolidate them on the ground floor of a new building at 65 Campus Ave., one of two new student residences planned along that street as part of the Campus Life Project.

The new office will have bells and whistles, but no mailboxes. Students will arrive and scan their IDs, which will alert the staff to bring the student’s mail, packages as well as letters and magazines, to a service counter.

Henderson estimates that 乐播传媒 will save around $64,000 by not installing mailboxes in the new mail center.

Sarah Keith 鈥�18 of North Andover, Mass., is with Morasch as he鈥檚 retrieving his package slip. She鈥檚 asked if it makes sense to eliminate the mailbox step of getting packages. She ponders the question, but only briefly. 鈥淚t would be a lot easier.鈥�

Aside from the all-important package tickets, student mailboxes are quiet spaces these days, filled mostly with flyers, junk mail and the occasional first-class letter. (Jay Burns/乐播传媒 College)

With the move, 乐播传媒 joins just a handful of U.S. colleges that have eliminated physical mailboxes in favor of the one-stop, package-center approach. Lehigh and Loyola have similar systems.

While all colleges have adapted their mail centers to accommodate the growth in package volume, few have done away with mailboxes altogether 鈥� yet.

“Schools that have the opportunity to create merged spaces in the next 20 years will consider this as a real option,” she predicts.

The extinction of 乐播传媒 student mailboxes represents a stunning fall from their once-lofty place in college life. They were enchanted spaces from which mostly good things flowed: letters, newsmagazines and postcards.

But their demise is not surprising. Mailboxes can鈥檛 handle most of what students get these days: packages and more packages.

Jessica Nichols ’15 of Lincoln, Mass., picks up a package from student worker Sam Maliska 鈥�15 of Palo Alto, Calif., at the Package Center in Chase Hall. (Sarah Crosby/乐播传媒 College)

鈥淭here鈥檚 been an explosion and a shift,鈥� says Henderson. Since the mid-2000s, 鈥渨e鈥檝e seen growth of between 5 and 14 percent per year in package volume. We don鈥檛 know when or if that trend will drop off.”

Not anytime soon, apparently. A 2010 report by the Boston Consulting Group for the U.S. Postal Service predicted 40 percent growth in package volume by 2020, 鈥渄riven by overall growth in business-to-consumer e-commerce.鈥�

That all means people these days are very comfortable receiving and shipping packages. In fact, when Lisa Morasch baked the coffee cake, she knew which of her pans would fit the cheapest flat-rate USPS box.

Until a few years ago, mail and package deliveries went to the small, 376-square-foot room right behind the student mailboxes. One day, Henderson and a colleague were crawling over and around all the packages, and the colleague fell. 鈥淭hat was it,鈥� said Henderson.

Luckily, that was when Dining Services had left Chase for new Commons, so Henderson and her team snapped up a former recycling room, conveniently located off a loading dock, and turned it into the Package Center.

Today, when packages arrive at the Package Center, they’re scanned by Office Services staff using a tracking software, SC Logic, that talks to Banner, the college’s database that includes student information.

Jacqueline Cooper ’17 of Chicago pulls a yellow slip from her Chase Hall mailbox alerting her that she has a package awaiting her in the Package Center. Her prize? A DVD of “The Great Gatsby” that her mom sent her. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/乐播传媒 College)

The system spits out two tracking labels. One gets affixed to a card that’s put in the student鈥檚 mailbox and the other is put on the package, which is placed in a section of the room according to the student’s last name. An email notice goes to the student.

As package volume has grown, the sole reason mailboxes ever existed 鈥� to hold first-class and other time-sensitive print mail 鈥� has practically disappeared.

Traditional letter mail has dwindled to next to nothing as person-to-person and business-to-consumer communications have moved online.

“We also get odd stuff,” says Ed Jawor 鈥�93, Office Services assistant director.

Today, 乐播传媒 students receive around 32,000 packages each year (鈥減ackages鈥� being defined as anything that won鈥檛 fit in the mailbox or has a tracking number). That鈥檚 18 packages per student annually, from care packages and birthday gifts to ecommerce merchandise and textbooks.

“We also get odd stuff,” says Ed Jawor 鈥�93, Office Services assistant director. “Like a set of four tires and an entire bed including frame, mattress and headboard.”

With 850 student mailboxes in Chase Hall for 1,750 students, 乐播传媒 has a long tradition of shared mailboxes. That also used to be part of the mailbox charm.

When Henderson arrived in the 1990s, focus groups told her that students liked sharing a mailbox because they liked meeting their box-mates. There was socializing and camaraderie.

That good vibe is now gone since the mailboxes are mostly just a stopping-off point. The real fun and excitement 鈥� picking up packages, opening them, being surprised 鈥� all happens at the Package Center.

Jawor recalls the scene in the Package Center the week before President Obama’s first inaugural.

“I was surprised at how many students were getting overnight packages with tickets to inaugural balls and other events,” he says. “One student cried when she picked up her package. It spoke to their passion and involvement in that election, and the role played by e-commerce and online communications.”

Even though the Package Center lines get long sometimes, “you鈥檙e super-excited to get a package, so it鈥檚 worth waiting,” says Keith.

Coffee cake in hand, Noah Morasch decided to share it with his First-Year Seminar class, “Choices and Constraints.” The cake’s rapid cross-country journey ended there.

“It was eaten quickly.”