Leone & Keeble Inc., of Spokane, has been named the contractor for two Eastern Washington University projects, worth a combined $1.4 million, that represent some of the early work in preparation for a planned $65 million renovation of Patterson Hall.

Meanwhile, EWU is seeking bids for the next phase of the long-term project, a $16 million addition to the aging brick building, says Jim Moeller, a senior project manager at the university.

In one of the projects, Leone & Keeble recently began working on asbestos abatement and preliminary selective interior demolition in preparation for the renovations, Moeller says. It won a $1.1 million contract for that work.

Meanwhile, the contractor also is working on a separate $279,000 project to reroute to trenches outside the building steam and electrical utilities that currently run through Patterson Hall. That work must be done because those systems also provide the utilities for the neighboring Isle Hall, so they have to be moved outside of Patterson Hall so they won't need to be shut off during the major renovations that are planned for Patterson.

Once those two projects are complete, work can begin on the project for which EWU currently is seeking bids, to construct a two-story addition to Patterson Hall that will add about 40 offices and 34,000 square feet of floor space on three sides of the 102,000-square-foot structure. That project is estimated to cost about $16 million, he says.

Moeller says bids will be opened for that phase of work on June 3. The work will entail constructing the addition over the next two years, including the office suites and new entrances into the building. Spokane-based NAC/Architecture Inc. designed the project.

Patterson Hall is EWU's largest instructional building, Moeller says, with 120 offices and 42 classrooms currently. It was built in the 1970s and needs to be modernized, he says. Once the renovation and additions are completed, the structure will have 44 more classrooms along with the additional office space, and an additional 40 percent seating capacity.

The building is now closed, and most of the faculty offices that had been there are being housed in the Walter Reid Elementary School building on campus, which is no longer being used by the Cheney School District. Classes in the various departments of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the College of Arts and Letters that have used that building for instruction are being held elsewhere on campus and in temporary classroom buildings, and the university stretched out its classroom schedule over longer hours to accommodate the loss of space.

Moeller says EWU hopes to be allotted funding for the fourth and final phase of the overall project, which entails renovating the interior of the building and adding classroom space in the state's budget for the next biennium. That phase is expected to cost about $26.1 million. He says the university tentatively plans to begin that project in June 2012, with completion anticipated in 2014.