ISEB is underway

Construction has commenced on the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB), the largest structure ever built on Case Quad.

In November, temporary fencing went up around an empty Yost Hall and Cleveland-based Turner Construction Co. began preparing the 72-year-old building for demolition, which is scheduled for March.

“We’ll probably have a ready (building) site in May,” said Dean Tufts, the vice president for campus planning and facilities management for CWRU.

When steel starts to rise, and the project becomes more visible, the campus community will have a chance to see the day-to-day work, Tufts said. The university plans to raise maybe three viewing platforms on the Quad so that people can see over the netted construction fencing. Bar codes will link to a description of the project underway.

“There’s going to be a lot of activity. We want people to be able to get a look at it,” he said.

Contractors are building a $300 million, five story, 189,000 square-foot facility designed to launch a new era of research for the Case School of Engineering and College of Arts and Sciences. It’s scheduled to open in the spring of 2026.

As evidenced by the construction fencing, which takes a big bite out of the Quad, the project will command attention across the next three years. When completed, ISEB will loom about four times the size of Yost, the original dorm of Case Institute of Technology.

The parking lot behind Yost, on Martin Luther King Drive, has been closed and will become a staging ground for construction crews on a multi-faceted project. One of their first tasks is to build a temporary boiler to heat Crawford Hall, which will no longer receive steam from a power plant south of campus through Yost Hall.

The university plans an official groundbreaking ceremony in October, timed to coincide with a meeting of the CWRU Board of Trustees.