Work begins on URI’s $15M Inner Space Center

NARRAGANSETT – Providence-based Gilbane Building Co. this month began construction of the $15 million undersea exploration center at the University of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay Campus.

The 41,000-square-foot building – dubbed the Inner Space Center – will use satellite and Internet2 systems to give local students the opportunity for live remote interaction with ocean-going expeditions. Construction is expected to be completed in spring 2009, according to Gilbane.

The center will “integrate key resources and services of the Graduate School of Oceanography, to further position it as a 21st-century leader” in undersea study, URI President Robert L. Carothers said in a statement.

Construction of the 41,000-square-foot building will coincide with the renovation and expansion of the Pell Marine Science Library. The building’s brick façade was designed to coordinate with the exteriors of the two closest buildings, both brick structures, according to URI spokesman Todd McLeish.

“What Houston is to outer space, this will be to inner space,” Robert Ballard – the celebrity marine explorer who discovered the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic in 1985, and who currently runs URI’s Institute of Archeological Oceanography – said at the groundbreaking last fall. (READ MORE)

The project is being financed with $14 million in state bonds plus an additional $1 million in private investments from several sources, said McLeish.

To learn more about the University of Rhode Island and its Graduate School of Oceanography, visit www.uri.edu.

Gilbane Inc. – a family-owned construction and real estate firm that is the parent of Gilbane Building Co. and Gilbane Development Co. – is ranked as the second-largest private company in Rhode Island on the Providence Business News 2007 Top Private Companies list, with annual revenue of $3.27 billion. To learn more, visit www.GilbaneCo.com.