News & Updates

Director Meade Celebrates Berklee Topping Off

Dec 04, 2012

Today on behalf of Mayor Thomas M. Menino Director Meade celebrated topping off on Berklee College of Music’s new living and education facility at 160 Massachusetts Avenue alongside Berklee President Roger Brown, Berklee Chairman Jeff Shames, and 150 construction workers, including electricians, iron workers, plumbers, and carpenters.  The $100 million project will add on campus housing for approximately 370 students, freeing up housing in the Fenway, Back Bay and South End neighborhoods for Boston residents.

Mayor Menino has been a longtime advocate of encouraging colleges and universities to build new dorms to move students out of neighborhoods and into supervised facilities. Since 2000 more than 11,000 new student beds have been added at institutions citywide.  There are currently 1,395 dorm units under construction and another 2,170 in the pipeline.

The ground floor of Berklee’s new 16-story facility is designed with floor to ceiling windows that will bring life from within the building into the neighborhood.  The project also includes 4,500 square feet of ground floor commercial space, possibly for a restaurant with live music, which will add to existing pedestrian foot traffic along the corridor.

The 155,000 total square foot facility will also include practice and ensemble rooms, a fitness center, student lounges, a two-story dining hall with 400 seats that will be used as a new venue for student performance, and a 19,000 square foot below grade music technology center with sound proof studios for recording and post-production activities.

The building features a modern, mixed-use edifice that will create a new vertical core for the Berklee campus.  160 Massachusetts Avenue is the college’s first ground up construction project and is the first phase of a multi-year planned expansion, which includes more student housing, a new performance center, and additional administrative and academic space.  More than 4,000 students attend Berklee College of Music, which occupies more than 20 buildings in the area around Boylston Street and Massachusetts Avenue.

The project architect is William Rawn Associates, Architects, Inc., of Boston.  The Rawn firm is responsible for a number of award-winning performing arts and campus buildings, including the Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, the new Cambridge Public Library, and Northeastern University Buildings G and H.

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