EnviroVantage

Mary Lyon Hall (1915) Plymouth State University
Plymouth, NH

Project: New Hampshire’s university system recently gave Plymouth State University the funding to renovate Mary Lyon Hall, an 84,000 square foot dormitory (built in 1915 and which houses nearly a quarter of the school’s undergraduates) to bring it up to current building standards.

Role: The University needed contractors who could perform the renovations and return the building to the students in one year. Such constraints necessitated that EnviroVantage—the first subcontractor on site—had to begin gutting the building as soon as students left in June and work long hours throughout the summer to finish in time for reconstruction.

Major Challenge: Each wall and tunnel opening in the four-story, multi-wing dormitory revealed previously undiscovered amounts of asbestos, which was carted off by the truckload. EnviroVantage also had to house, feed, and manage large work crews throughout the abatement process.

Result: The hall, the largest dormitory at Plymouth State, is named for women’s education pioneer Mary Lyon (1797-1849), who founded what is now Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. When Plymouth students return in the fall of 2007, they will be living in the most up-to-date dormitory of any college in New England.