Board of Trustees approves $486 million Campus Master Plan

By Sophia Oppedisano 

Editor-in-Chief

The Board of Trustees unanimously approved a new Campus Master Plan (CMP), which will cost $486 million, at its first meeting of the semester on Jan. 28.

The University’s previous CMP was completed in 2012 and was updated until 2022, according to Robert Totino, vice president of Finance, Technology, and Administration. 

Totino said he “engaged with” the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM) in September 2024 to begin work on a new, 10-year CMP. 

A 10-year CMP “is what is required by the state if we're looking to get any funding for any projects that might be included in the plan. It has to be current,” he said.

Totino added the “why” of the project is to “Identify and reaffirm our facilities investments [and] make sure they're aligned with, of course, the University's mission and strategic plan.”

An FSU Steering Committee, comprised of faculty, staff, and Trustee Dennis Giombetti, was formed in December 2024 and began working on the project, Totino said. Students also participated in the plan and various focus groups throughout 2025, “which was so critical,” he added.

Totino said he received the final report for the CMP in December 2025 and presented “11 recommendations that were tucked into the Campus Master Plan” to the Board.

The most “prominent” recommendation is the proposed relocation or renovation of the Henry Whittemore Library, Totino said. 

The Whittemore Library, currently located in the easternmost area of campus on Larned Beach, would be relocated to State Street, where Foster Hall and the Framingham State University Early Childhood Center are currently situated.

Foster Hall and the Early Childhood Center would be demolished, and a new “more optimally sized” 65,000 square foot Library Learning Commons would be built, Totino said.

Whether the Whittemore Library is relocated or renovated, the project will cost approximately $90 million, he added.

Other “highlights” of the CMP include “providing an identity” to the College of Business in Crocker Hall as well as the College of Education and Social and Behavioral Sciences in O’Connor Hall, Totino said.

He noted the overall decrease in enrollment allows the “possibility to repurpose a certain number of classrooms” and “auxiliary spaces.

“We have roughly 60 classrooms. The thought was that we could potentially repurpose 20 of them into departmental living rooms, where you can convert a classroom into an area where faculty and students could congregate and meet offline, discuss various topics, and have other types of meetings,” Totino added. 

The repurposed classrooms could be converted back into classrooms if enrollment were to begin increasing, he said. 

The CMP also includes the continued “adoption of environmentally conscious practices, including decarbonization,” which could be achieved by 2030 and finalized by 2050, according to Totino’s presentation.

Each project laid out in the CMP will “stand alone” and go through its own “multi-step process” over the next “10-plus years,” Totino said. 

Trustee Claire Ramsbottom asked which project would be prioritized first and how that would be decided. 

Totino said there are specific projects “we hope to do within year zero to year five, years six to 10, and then 10 plus and so multiple variables will depend on which projects we tackle on that timeline.” 

Totino said he has had discussions with President Nancy Niemi to come up with a list of projects “we want to tackle, maybe in years one to three,” and passed on the list to the facilities team. 

Totino added DCAMM and the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education are the next “state bodies” that will “hopefully move in the same direction on approval.”

In addition to the approval of the CMP, Trustee Lino Covarrubias presented the Compliance, Audit, and Risk (CAR) Committee report.