Health Services is expected to look different in the future as an $80 million project to construct a new building is being planned. PHOTO CREDIT: Siobhan Richards
The University of Rhode Island has plans to construct a new building to house Health Services and the Counseling Center under one roof after a multi-year construction delay.
The building is estimated to cost the University around $80 million and will be located where the current Health Services parking lot is, according to URI President Marc Parlange.
The project was announced by former President David Dooley at a URI Student Senate meeting shortly after the opening of Brookside Hall, the newest building on campus. Originally, the construction was expected to start during the fall 2020 semester. However, the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the project significantly, with current plans to start construction during the spring 2023 semester.
Katherine Kittredge, the associate director of Campus Design, is overseeing this project and said that the building plans are still in their early stages.
“We have a state entity that everybody goes through, but we have to go through a permitting process and send [the design] out to bid,” she said.
According to Kittredge, the building will likely be sent out to bid, meaning that local contractors will tell the University how much they would want to be paid for the project, in the fall of 2022.
The building still faces some major roadblocks before construction can begin, however, according to Kittredge, the biggest one is replacing the current Health Services parking lot and making a new one for the building.
“We know that we have to have parking for patients, and they have visiting physician specialists who need to come in, ambulance parking and also deliveries,” Kittredge said. “That’s a really big challenge for us in the future.”
She is still looking at what can potentially take over the space that Health Services currently uses in the Potter Building.
Currently, there is no set date for the building to open, however, Cory Clark, the interim director of the Counseling Center, said that he hopes that the combined building will open by the summer of 2024.
Clark said that being in the same building as Health Services and being able to work more closely with them will be a benefit to the Counseling Center.
“Students will often show up at Health Services and present with mental health symptoms, like anxiety and depression, and then they would refer them and send them here,” Clark said. “This way, they’ll be right there, just potentially taking an elevator or going down the hall.”
The new building will also allow the Counseling Center more space than it currently has on the second floor of Roosevelt Hall.
Clark said that the additional space in the new building will mainly be used for teletherapy and additional space for their graduate training programs, which trains clinical graduate students to become therapists. He is also hoping that there will be some outdoor space for physical activities to incorporate mental health and physical exercise, including yoga.
Parlange said that the building construction also aims to fulfill another goal for the University.
“We’re certainly making a strong case to the state that as part of the American Recovery Plan, this is an important piece we believe that should be supported,” he said.
Parlange also said that the benefits to making the connections between Health Services and the Counseling Center, as well as upgrading their facilities, outweighed the cost.
“It may sound like a big number, but in fact the returns are enormous and the returns in people’s lives will be extremely significant,” Parlange said.