The administrative offices in the Department of Facilities are moving out of their Building E18 locations on Friday, September 24. Those areas include the Director's Office, the I/T Group and the finance and accounting area.
Their new location will be right across Main Street at Three Cambridge Center above the MIT Coop. Although MIT will lease the space for three to four years, the offices are considered on-campus and will have the MIT address of Rm NE20-277.
"MIT is a research university, so we must move to accommodate that research," said Victoria V. Sirianni, director of Facilities. The Center for Learning and Memory led by Professor Susumu Tonegawa will occupy the Building E18 space that has housed Facilities for more than 35 years.
However, not all of the staff in Rm E18-207 will relocate to Building NE20. In October, Design and Construction (DCS) and the Capital Projects Group will move to Building 45, where they will join other Facilities staff who have been there for several months already. Building 45 serves as the central office for the Stata Center project and is undergoing renovations to accommodate the additional Facilities staff.
DCS and the Capital Projects Group will share resources of staff, technology and other office support during the upcoming capital development.
"As MIT enters a period of increased construction activity, we want to ensure that we coordinate and enhance communication with the MIT community," said David Myers, manager of Design and Construction. "Housing DCS and the Capital Projects Group in the same location will allow for a collaboration of activities that will enable us to do that."
Although the Facilities staff on the second floor of Building E18 are moving, the areas housed on the first floor are not. The Operations Center as well as Repair and Maintenance will remain on the first floor of Buildings E18 and E19 for now. Last month the Key Issuance area was also moved from the second floor to Rm E18-172 to accommodate the incoming research labs.
"Our department has kept pace with technological advances, so we will be able to serve the MIT community even though we will be in decentralized locations," said Ms. Sirianni. "Of course, our ideal situation is to be in a space that accommodates all of our areas." Therefore, over the next few months the department will study its business processes and present a space proposal for one location to the Executive Vice President John Curry.
The telephone and fax numbers for the Rm NE20 staff will be the same as they were in Building E18. The DCS staff will retain their phone numbers but will have a different fax number at their new location that will be announced at a later date.
The architectural firm of Perry and Radford, who also designed the renovation of Building N42 two years ago, was hired to configure the necessary space changes for Rm NE20-277. Renovations to the space were kept to a minimum and include alterations to accommodate two people to an office and one person cubicle spaces with three-quarter-height partitions.
Although the MIT community may encounter some disruption of communication to the Director's Office and the finance and accounting area during the days surrounding the move, Repair and Maintenance will operate business as usual, as will Custodial and Mail Services. Information Systems and the Facilities I/T Group will work over the weekend to ensure that phones and computers in Rm NE20-277 are ready to go on Monday morning.
Facilities will join several other MIT departments housed in Building NE20 including the MIT Sea Grant College Program, the Center for Transportation Studies, and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
The building, managed by Boston Properties, also contains businesses not affiliated with MIT. A private security guard is posted in the lobby and requires identification before allowing anyone to enter the building. Therefore, MIT employees visiting Building NE20 should have their ID with them when coming to do business with the Facilities staff.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 22, 1999.
