All the plans up to 2035
This is what the UMCG grounds will look like
Door René Hoogschagen
By René Hoogschagen
The main building with the outpatient clinics and wards, housed in the towers with the indoor balconies, will be thoroughly updated. Because they can’t interrupt patient care, this will be done little by little or, in this case, tower by tower. Renovations on the first tower will start this year, and the last tower should be finished by 2030.
The psychiatry department is currently housed in a run-down complex on the east side of the grounds. It will move to a brand-new building a stone’s throw away next year. Its construction is currently underway and will be finished later this year.
The old buildings will then be razed, apart from the bicycle parking facility underneath one of them, since that is still useful (more on that later). This will make room for the UMCG’s labs, which will be getting a new complex. Construction will start in 2025 and should be finished in 2028. The new complex will be a kind of hot-desking building for lab researchers.
Puzzle
Right now, each department has its own labs, but putting them all together will save room which can then be used for something else. All the intensive care units will also be grouped together (renovation will start in 2025, finished by 2030). For everything pertaining to pregnancy and care for young children, a new parent-child centre will be created (2028).
It won’t look like what we drew thirteen years ago
It’s a huge puzzle, and it will all fall apart if the city council rejects the construction of the lab building. It certainly won’t look like the plans that were drawn and approved thirteen years ago, says Evert Jan Beens, managing director at UB2035. At the time, they’d come up with a U shape, but Beens says that won’t work for the lab workers. The space between the two sides needs to be much smaller. New plans for this have already been drawn up, but it won’t look like that, either, says Beens: it still needs tiers to prevent the whole thing from looking too massive.
But Beens doesn’t expect that will be an issue and there will be no delay. ‘The psychiatry building also turned out different and that was fine.’
Anda Kerkhoven Centre
Then there’s the north side, where the faculty is located. More buildings will be going up over there. Eriba and the proton therapy centre were done a while ago, and a new educational building, the Anda Kerkhoven Centre, is also going up. It will have a tower with classrooms, several large lecture halls, and in between, a large roof with meeting points, eateries, and the new entrance. Construction started in 2022 and will be finished in 2023.
Spokesperson Jeroen de Lezenne Coulander has a tip for when the AKC is finished: hanging out on the steps. The stairwell will be extra wide to allow for seating. The top floor will have a great view of the city.
The old Bloemsingel 1 roof will become a terrace
Across from the currently dead-end road between the W.A. Scholtenstraat and the construction site where the new educational building will arise is the stately Bloemsingel 1, that ornamental building with the cute awnings. That’s where the elite students at the University College Groningen will be taking their classes. The renovation starts in 2024 and will be finished by 2025.
A new glass addition will be built to partially cover the existing building. Interestingly enough, the building is not a historic monument, says De Lezenne Coulander, ‘only the façade is. But we’re treating it as though it is a monument. He has another tip: the top floor of the new addition will have a view of the entire city. The old roof will become a terrace.
Usva and ACLO
Is that it? Absolutely not.
The Usva and ACLO will be housed next to the UCG, in part of the old pharmacy faculty building. The Usva theatre will also move to this building, while ACLO will only have its offices in the new building. What this will look like and when construction starts isn’t clear yet: the project hasn’t even been tendered yet. The old pharmacy building will lose a bit on one side, while gaining an addition on the other, perhaps for the theatre.
Farther north, we encounter de Vrydemalaan and the Bodenterrein. This is the strip of land that houses the city beach, DOT, the Nijestee shipping container flats, the fitboy outside gym, and a residential apartment building. The latter is called Libertas and was finished last November. It has rooms for 270 UCG students.
However, the shipping containers will have to be torn down in 2026, because that’s when the fifteen-year permit for them runs out. ‘They’re pretty run down’, says area manager Eduard Ridder. It’s still a mystery as to what will replace the container homes. The UG, UMCG, and the city are still talking about it, he says. They’ll present their vision for the area in the summer, and it will cover the main entrance to the container flats.
Environment
To make everything look nice, landscape architects from various agencies are working on plans for the entire outside of the UMCG. Let’s be honest, it looks like crap right now. Project leader John de Groot says the plans include less asphalt, more green spaces, and fewer bikes. Bicycle storage facilities will be underground or in specialised multi-storey constructions. Cars will be allowed on the grounds but can’t park there.
A bicycle path will run across the whole of the grounds
The entire area will also be more connected to the rest of the city. This means a bicycle path will run across the whole of the grounds, running from the Korreweg, past the north entrance, to the city centre. That is, if the neighbours don’t put up too much of a fuss.
Landscaping agency Felixx, in charge of the general design of the outside area, has come up with the idea of two ring roads: one on the outside and one on the inside. The outside ring road runs across the Vrydemalaan, past the Oostersingel and the main entrance, and back between the water and the buildings. The inside ring starts at the main entrance, goes across the Fonteinstraat, turns right at the north entrance and goes back inside at the Beatrix Children’s Hospital and across the Poortweg back to the main entrance.
Solar panels
The psychiatry department’s roof will become a green space. This is good for insulation, and it absorbs rainwater. Construction project manager Marcel Cramer says they’ll also build a rainwater storage unit. That wasn’t part of the original assignment, he says, but he’s having it built anyway. ‘The plants need water even when it doesn’t rain’, he says. ‘It would be a waste to use tap water for that.’
The other part of the building and the roof of the lab building will be covered in solar panels instead of plants. Roodehaan, to the south east of the city, will also get solar panels. Starting next summer, UMCG will buy ten gigawatt hours from the new solar park there. This represents nearly 30 percent of the total usage.
Why aren’t they putting solar panels on the existing UMCG roofs? Unfortunately, it’s not a possibility, says sustainability programme manager Charlotte Kumm. They can’t be put on the nursing ward towers because of fire safety, they can’t be put near the helipad because they’ll either blow away or make the roof too heavy. Many other roof locations are already taken up by other things, such as ventilation equipment.