By Elizabeth Levi, News Correspondent  

Over the past seven years, Northeastern’s research funds have grown from about $48 million per year to approximately $100 million per year, senior vice president for external affairs Michael Armini said. Along with these increased funds came a need for more research space and the idea for the new science and engineering building, which is scheduled to open in the fall of 2016 in the place where the Columbus parking lot now sits.

“For several years, the university has been hiring a lot more tenured and tenure-track faculty members,” Armini said. “We’ve hired about 400 over the last six years, so those are faculty who we consider to be research active. In other words, they are not only teaching, but they’re doing a lot of research, and as part of that, the university’s research enterprise has grown dramatically.”

To accommodate the growth, the $225 million building will contain classrooms and laboratories throughout its six stories as well as host some sort of retail place such as a potential café on the first floor, Armini said.

“The building also is going to be characterized by having a lot of glass, and on the inside they’ll be having a lot of opportunities to see what’s happening in the labs,” he said. “In other words, we don’t want it to be a closed off set of rooms and laboratories. We want it to be very open. We want it to be about collaboration, and to sort of give people a window into the research process.”

Although the facility will be located at the current site of the Columbus Lot, it will also feature a bridge over the train tracks and create another passage to the central part of campus.

“This is really going to connect the main campus to this side of the track – this is the Roxbury side of the campus, and we think building that connective tissue is going to really help,” Armini said. “This will be really sort of knitting together two parts of the campus.”

Not only will the new building make the campus more cohesive, it will also improve Northeastern’s reputation, Armini said.

“We do feel that the university’s reputation is strongly enhanced by having a really powerful research enterprise,” he said. “So even though buildings are ultimately only structures, a research building like this, I think, will send a huge message to the research community and the world of higher education that we are a very significant research institution.”

For sophomore biology major Max Klapholz, the building will not only benefit the university’s reputation, but also his education.

“I think it’s great the university is planning to expand its facilities to enhance the programs for science and engineering students and faculty,” Klapholz said. “New facilities might come at a cost, but they are vital to staying current in an ever-changing world, with innovations in science and engineering cropping up every day.”

The building, Armini said, will also benefit the community of Roxbury.

“It’s a neighborhood that really welcomes this development,” Armini said. “You know, there will be jobs that this project brings to the area – both in terms of the construction of the building, but also after the building is built, so we’ve worked pretty closely with the city and the neighborhoods to make sure we have support for it.”

The proposal for the new science and engineering building was part of Northeastern’s Institutional Master Plan (IMP), which outlines any potential construction projects the school has planned for the next decade. Armini said that the plan also includes a new dorm building as well as the potential for another science building. The new dorm will be built within the next five years, he said. The Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) approved Northeastern’s IMP in November, after two years of discussion with the university and the community members.

The science and engineering building, however, is first on the list to be built and will integrate all of Northeastern’s missions, Armini said.

“Northeastern has two facets to its mission: education and research – and in this building it will all come together,” he said.