Several years ago, Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA, faced that conundrum. Existing science buildings were more than 50 years old, and the college sought to include them into an ambitious $34.5 million plan to create a unified science center that would foster intellectual exchange and interdisciplinary research among all science departments - astronomy, chemistry, biological sciences, biochemistry, mathematics and statistics, physics, computer science, and earth and environmental studies - and serve to attract the curiosity of non-science majors.
An evaluation of existing facilities found that they could be upgraded and reused as lab and science spaces. Mount Holyoke's unified science complex now encompasses a new 40,000-sq-ft, four-story building that connects to three existing laboratory and science buildings, with 76,000 sq ft of renovated space. Kendade Hall, the new building, was completed in 2002; renovations to existing facilities were completed in 2003.