Project to supply chilled, heated water for academic buildings, housing

By Edwin B. Smith

The University of Mississippi is building a new mechanical plant north of Kinard Hall to support chilled and hot water demand for heating and cooling in that area of campus.

The new facility will provide additional capacity to support new facilities for housing and academics, said Chad Hunter, associate university architect. The project is scheduled to get underway in January and be completed by September 2025.

“The new mechanical plant will also provide greater campuswide system redundancy, geographic and utility source diversity, increased energy efficiency, greater flexibility to transfer load across the loop and elimination of low-pressure zones within the loop,” he said.

Ian Banner, director of facilities planning and university architect, has served as director of the Office of Sustainability since 2012. This project will help campus administrators thoughtfully manage the university’s resources as new residence halls are constructed to replace Kincannon Hall, he said.

“We don’t want to be wasteful,” Banner said. “Our No. 1 goal is to use all our resources wisely and as prudently as we can.”

The project will require that the parking lot behind Kinard Hall be closed.

Employees with faculty and staff parking permits who work in Kinard and Sam-Gerard halls will have access to the Kincannon lot and Residential Garage for the spring semester, said Samuel Patterson, director of parking and transportation. Many of the reserved parking spaces in the back of the Kinard lot will be transferred to a new location in front of the building.

Faculty and staff can park in any lot designated Commuter Red or Commuter Blue, provided they have a permit, Patterson said. They can also park in the Jackson Avenue Center lot and take the Bronze shuttle, which leaves every 10-15 minutes and drops off at Baxter Hall.

For more info about the bus lines, check out the campus map and click on the Parking and Transportation and Oxford-University Transit tabs.