University administrators faced a sharp barrage of outrage from faculty in the Department of Chemistry over a $140 million renovation set to gut parts of Dabney Hall at a town hall Tuesday.
Professors chided the team managing the phased renovation, set to start in 2025, over safety concerns. NC State plans to renovate spaces in Dabney Hall while occupants remain in the building, which was a key point of tension in the hour-long exchange.
An assessment of Dabney Hall for hazardous building materials found PCBs, chemicals linked to cancer that have been found in at least two other campus buildings, in concentrations above the EPA limit in exterior caulking around the building’s windows.
Tom Raymond, an environmental engineer at S&ME, the firm who conducted the assessment, said tests also detected PCBs inside Dabney Hall “below levels of concern.”
Contaminated materials will be removed before renovation with the safety of occupants in mind, Raymond said.
“The caulking will be removed from the outside, windows removed from the outside,” Raymond said. “The building material will not be exposed inside at all.”
The assessment, which is part of NC State protocol for routine renovation work, also found asbestos, lead paint and mercury in the building, all to be expected in a laboratory environment like Dabney Hall, Raymond said. He said NC State will conduct all abatement of hazardous contaminants in accordance with state requirements, and he doesn’t expect occupants to be exposed.
The nine-story building will undergo renovation in several phases, said Glenn Wise, who’s the preconstruction director with New Atlantic Contracting, the construction contractor NC State hired. The eighth floor will be renovated first, starting in August 2025.
While each floor is renovated, its occupants will move to space in Broughton Hall, or, later in the years-long project, in the new Integrative Sciences Building. Wise said the plan is to ensure there’s always a floor between occupants and active construction.
Despite this, some faculty said they’d rather vacate the building during construction out of concern for safety.
“You’re going to do a toxicological experiment on thousands and perhaps 10,000 students who come to this building every year, the health effects of which will not be known for a decade or several decades,” said Jonathan Lindsey, professor and Glaxo Distinguished University Chair in the Department of Chemistry.
NC State’s been working to plan and design the renovation for two years, and it has sought feedback from faculty in that process, said Cameron Smith, assistant vice chancellor for design and construction.
Jim Martin, a professor in the Department of Chemistry, said he’s dissatisfied with communication about the renovation thus far.
“I have yet to hear a faculty member who feels like their concerns have been addressed,” Martin said. “So I’m just curious, can you tell us where some of that feedback shows its face in the design?”
Draft minutes from a February meeting of the Campus Development Committee, which oversees major capital projects, that Technician obtained in a public records request said the College of Sciences requested the project “slow down” to give the chemistry department more time to relocate before construction. The minutes said the committee doesn’t support delaying the project, and it will proceed in a “quick but prudent fashion.”
One individual requested to remain on a particular floor in Dabney Hall during active construction, the minutes said. The committee rejected that request.
Smith said he and the rest of the chancellor-appointed building committee on the renovation have tried to optimize the plan for the many constituents it’ll affect, but the University needs to move forward with construction and spend the total of $140 million the General Assembly allocated for the building renovation.
“From a schedule perspective, we’re under the gun,” Smith said. “This is a state-appropriated building, the state of North Carolina expects us to move fast and spend the appropriations fast, so schedule is important.”
The renovation aims to fully renovate mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, create code-compliant bathrooms, reconfigure research labs to account for program growth, eliminate the balconies and integrate Dabney Hall with Cox Hall. It’ll also add conference rooms and break areas to the building.
Smith said he trusts the contractors to do this renovation safely.
“We do occupied renovation every day here in NC State — large, small, medium-sized, every building,” Smith said. “Right now, a lot of projects we have are in occupied spaces, so I think we have high confidence that we can renovate the floors in the phasing that we’ve stipulated.”
This article was updated March 11 at 1:30 p.m. to include information from the Campus Development Committee draft meeting minutes that Technician obtained in a public records request.
Dabney Hall, pictured on Monday, Nov. 8, 2021, is home to the department of chemistry at NC State. Dabney Hall was built in 1969 and is located on north campus at 2620 Yarbrough Drive.
