ANN ARBOR - With little room to work in this crowded university town - and virtually no spaces to park their cars -building trades workers and construction manager Barton Malow are successfully going about the job of erecting the Palmer Drive Development.

The bigfoot, $168 million project is being shoehorned into an area at Washtenaw and Huron streets in the central area of the University of Michigan campus. The signature project on the job is the $100 million, 235,000 square-foot Life Sciences Institute, a six-story building which will allow scientists "to explore the complex questions of the emerging scientific revolution in the life sciences," according to the university.

"There's no question, it's a tight site," said Barton Malow Project Administrator Brent Bohan. "That's the reason for the tower crane. There's no room to park, there's no room for lay-downs. But we've adjusted, and we're doing well." Hardhats working at the site park elsewhere and are bused in and out.

Also part of the project is the $32 million, 99,000-square-foot Commons Building, which will provide conference, retail and dining space. A Department of Public Safety neighborhood office will be located here, as well as Plant Operations department offices.

Unsurprisingly, the site also includes a 1,000-spot, five-deck parking structure. In the bowels of the parking structure is a one million-gallon capacity cistern to accommodate and improve storm water run-off in the area. Although plans are not finalized, a four-story Science Instruction Center Building is expected to be placed atop the parking structure. It will house instructional space for students and space for a variety of science programs.

Moving vehicular and pedestrian traffic around and through this project is particularly important to the university. The new parking structure will be connected on two levels by bridges for vehicular traffic to an existing parking deck. The roof level will serve as a walkway/plaza providing access to the Life Sciences Institute and Commons Building. All the connectivity, the university says, will create a much-needed "circulation path" between the nearby Medical and Central campuses.

Between 325 to 375 university employees will work at the Life Sciences Institute, including about 25 researchers from a variety of disciplines. The U of M describes the newly formed institute as the "crown jewel of the University of Michigan's renewed emphasis on the life sciences," but at the same time, "somewhat of an experiment" because it involves breaking down traditional academic distinctions.

"The questions we face aren't just in one area like biochemistry anymore," said Jack E. Dixon, Ph.D., director of the Institute. "You need computers, engineering, chemistry, physics, clinical medicine to get a handle on some of these things. We'd like to have all those people under one roof, working together."

The building will include collaborative meeting spaces and offices for visiting faculty and post-doctoral fellows. Included in the physical space the trades will be creating are wet research laboratories and support spaces, core laboratory areas, principal investigators' offices, interaction spaces and administrative offices. Though the exact direction of the institute's research will be determined by the investigators it attracts, the initial thrust is going to be in the area of communication among cells.

"The greater goals of this life sciences initiative are very interesting, and I think it's interesting and challenging to be a part of it, even if it's a small part compared to what they will be doing later," Bohan said. "We've been pleased with the quality of work from the Ann Arbor-area trades."

WORK BEGAN IN September 2000 on the Palmer Drive Development on the University of Michigan campus. The target date for the opening of the Life Sciences Institute, at right, is the fall of 2003. The concrete base of the parking structure is in the foreground. The steel frame to the rear will be the Commons Building. The two stacks sit atop the U-M powerhouse, which is nearly surrounded by new development.

INSTALLING PIPE hangars at the Life Sciences Institute is Keith Jones of Plumbers and Pipe Fitters 190 and John E. Green.