text: Beginning in 1970, the construction of the Columbia Point campus was the largest public capital construction project in the history of Massachusetts (exceeded only later by the Big Dig). The state government hired a single construction management firm, McKee-Berger-Mansueto (MBM), to supervise six other architectural firms and construction companies to complete the project by September 1973. The construction had multiple delays: the Boston Edison Company had not finished its electrical work, and because the site was a former landfill (that had only been closed since 1963), a concrete and brick substructure (where all of the campus mechanical systems would run conduits) undergirded by hundreds of driven piles needed to be constructed before the buildings, but pile driving released methane from the former landfill, requiring construction workers to halt production while each release of methane dispersed.
  The Columbia Point campus was originally composed of five buildings connected by a series of skyways on the second floors of the buildings: McCormack Hall, Wheatley Hall, the Science Center, the Healey Library (which was designed by Chicago modernist architect Harry Weese), and the Quinn Administration Building. To transport students from Columbia station, the MBTA concluded that constructing a skyway from the station to the campus would be too expensive, and the university administration set about planning a shuttle bus system, funded by parking fees. Campus facilities would rise from the bottom of the substructure and the bottom of the substructure would provide entry to a parking garage with 1,600 spaces. Because the campus was surrounded on three sides by a bay, exposed to sea breeze and winter storms, the salt water in the atmosphere and the road salt carried from automobiles would eventually damage parts of the substructure beyond feasible and cost-effective repair.