2 major buildings just part of plan for the next 2 decades
03/22/04
Construction crews are putting a new face on the 44-year-old Marshall Space Flight Center, with work on two major buildings under way.
As employees travel to work on Redstone Arsenal, steel girders of a six-story, 140,000 square-foot NASA office building loom over Martin and Rideout roads. The building will be the first of three structures at the new 4600 office and lab complex at Marshall.
"We planned that (complex) to consolidate office space and to provide some lab space," said Tim Corn, a Marshall facilities manager.
About 500 people will move into the building from 1960s-era facilities when it is ready for occupants in March or April 2005. When complete, the office complex should slash power consumption by nearly 25 percent, Corn said. The Space Center spends $1.2 million a month on utilities. "Buildings of a better design will be more efficient and less costly to operate," Corn said.
Part of that efficiency is gained by better use of sunlight instead of electric lighting and through newer heating and cooling units, Corn said. Considered state of the art in the 1960s, most Marshall buildings are not up to speed in the Internet age. Corn said the new buildings will make it easier to in-stall computer networks and will be designed to produce a comfortable place to work.
"I think one of the factors that goes beyond money and new equipment is that these buildings are designed for the people who will use them. Meaning they will be built around the needs of people. ... These will be nice places to work and, in turn, will help attract and keep talent" at Marshall, Corn said.
New Marshall HQ
By early next decade, Marshall planners want to begin demolishing part of the 4200 office complex. The 4200 building is the center's signature building. It's where German rocket team leader Wernher von Braun had his office as Marshall director - center director Dave King works there today - and where Von Braun plotted America's rocket plans. The building was known as "The Von Braun Hilton," partly because it was the largest structure for miles around.
The main 4200 office building will be substantially remodeled in the new plan, Corn said, and a new headquarters building will be constructed sometime in the beginning of the next decade. "The 4200 building, as it stands today, is not slated for demolition," Corn said.
The new construction will come over the next two decades and by 2020 to 2025, Marshall Space Flight Center should look significantly different than it does today. But two decades is a long time, Corn said, and the building plans are not chiseled in stone - they could be altered.
"A master plan is a framework to hang things on - it's not law," Corn said. "Funding levels change, mission plans change and you have to be flexible. As we see it right now, this master plan meets approval from (NASA headquarters) and the Marshall leadership. This is what we are working to implement."
Lunar choices
The 4600 complex was dealt a setback this year when NASA managers delayed the next office building. To pay for the startup of lunar exploration plans, a majority of NASA's building projects were delayed by at least a year because of the space agency's budget overhaul.
That means that the $25 million secondoffice building for the 4600 complex was delayed from fiscal 2006 to fiscal 2007, Corn said. The delay should not lead to higher costs or be much more than an inconvenience, Marshall leaders say.
"It's an office building being delayed for a year," King said shortly after the Bush exploration plan was released in January. "In terms of this agency's vision to return to the moon, I don't see that delay as any kind of setback."
Marshall planners have a 20- to 25-year road map that makes the new office complex the cornerstone of a Marshall South Campus. The two other office buildings will have a cafeteria and house up to 1,500 people, Corn said.
Labs, security training
Also, work is almost complete on the $32 million Propulsion Research Laboratory, which should move about 50 propulsion research scientists out of labs built for Army research work more than 50 years ago.
"To say that we are anxiously awaiting this new lab space is pretty much an understatement," Dr. Steve Rodgers, manager of the Propulsion Research Center said last month. "This will not only allow us to conduct research we have not been able to get deep into, but it will just make our lives better."
Researchers are scheduled to move into the new lab the first week of April, Corn said.
And work on a $670,000 security training building is about 70 percent complete, said Glenn Thomas, a Marshall building manager. A large gym-type structure, it will be used by Marshall, Department of Defense, Department of Justice and Huntsville police for training.
"The security forces really didn't have a place to perform this kind of training and this will allow for the special type of training these jobs require," Thomas said.