The 106,000-square-foot Matthews Arena, nestled in the heart of Northeastern University’s Boston campus, holds nearly 5,000 people, borders an MBTA station and harmonizes with the nearby Boston Symphony Orchestra.
However, the 115-year-old building will soon be “surgically” deconstructed to make way for a state-of-the-art, multi-purpose athletics and recreation complex.
Starting this winter, crews from Suffolk Construction, the contractor of the project, will begin the deliberate process of dismantling the historic arena using a high-reach excavator to carefully pick apart pieces of the structure for recycling and saving precious artifacts along the way.
“It’s a very surgical procedure,” said Ben Carawan, Suffolk Construction’s project executive for the new arena. “We really kind of pick away at the building. Suffolk wants to be a good neighbor … (so) we all work together to ensure the scope of work is done safely and in thought of our surrounding neighbors.”
Tucked between two subway stations and surrounded by community buildings, Matthews is more than just home to Northeastern sports teams. It is also neighbor to several local theaters, a parking garage and another local college. Given its location in such a dense area, officials said, the building will be “disassembled” to avoid disrupting city life in the area.
The deconstruction of Matthews will begin this month with the salvaging of items inside the arena, such as the seats and the basketball court floor. From there, Suffolk Construction will take over the building with plans to begin demolition in February. The company is aiming to take down the building by April.
After the final game on Dec. 13, Northeastern will relocate all staff who work at Matthews to new locations, said Carla Morelli, a director of capital projects in Northeastern’s Planning, Real Estate and Facilities department. CollectU, a university memorabilia salvaging company, will then salvage memorabilia from the stadium between Dec. 15 and Jan. 5, identifying what items could be saved for fans. The university will also reuse some items, such as lighting and portions of the scoreboard, in the new arena.
“We’re being very deliberate,” said Morelli. “People feel very emotional about this building … so we’re trying to do the most respectful job we can.”
CollectU will go in with a hoist to take down banners from the rafters, remove seating and divide the basketball court into pieces to be sold.
Some memorabilia, such as seats and bricks from the arena, are already for sale but other items collected during the salvaging process will be sold over the course of the next three years, until the new arena opens, said Jack McCorkle, executive director for advancement operations. CollectU will preserve and store these pieces for the university.
On Jan. 5, Suffolk Construction will take over the project. Officials from Suffolk Construction said they plan to begin deconstruction of Matthews in February. The process will likely take about three months.
Suffolk said the first order of business will be to salvage the historic arch from 1910, which will be preserved and used in the new building. After that, the real work can begin.
Rather than a large, dramatic process with dynamite or a wrecking ball, Carawan said the arena will be deconstructed piece by piece with a high-reach excavator that will allow them to pick apart sections of the building carefully and preserve the material. A crew of eight to 10 people will be on site each day during this process.
“It’s a large, voluminous building, so it’s going to be taken down in a very controlled manner,” said Carawan. “It’s all going to be done in a safe manner and carefully disassembled so that we’re protecting the public and we’re keeping the university and tradespeople on site safe.”
Special considerations are given to the process, given the building’s location near a subway station and other community buildings. Carawan said Suffolk worked with the university, the city of Boston and an engineering company, Howard Stein Hudson, to come up with a plan to keep the public safe during the project.
The site will be surrounded by a construction fence with a navy blue scrim to protect dust from spreading from the demolition. There will also be concrete jersey barriers surrounding the site to separate foot traffic from the trucks that will be transporting pieces of the building. Police will be present as well to monitor the gates, especially as people are leaving the nearby subway stop.
The university often has police details monitoring construction sites on the Boston campus to keep pedestrians safe, said Jeremy Munn, an architecture lecturer at Northeastern who was previously a program director with PREF where he worked on projects in Oakland and Boston, including ISEC and EXP. While there are challenges to this work in any location, he said that doing work in a city means there’s less space, which requires more coordination.
“(Boston) is a very dense location and the campus is bound by multiple train lines, so we can’t just do work willy-nilly,” added Munn. “There’s lots of coordination at the state level, at the city level.”
Munn said Northeastern works with multiple Boston city departments to ensure noise levels, public safety, utilities and roadways are all protected during construction projects.
As for the materials from the building, Carawan said they will recycle as much as possible. The structural steel trusses and columns, bricks and concrete will be sent to recycling plants. The concrete will be crushed to be reused as fill or gravel for another project.
“As one of the top green builders in the country, it’s really important for us that we live up to our mission and align our goals with the university’s sustainability approach,” Carawan said. “Matthews Arena as a building could spread out across the country (in terms of) where all the materials could end up.”
Suffolk will also play a part in preserving pieces of the old structure. It’ll start the demolition process by salvaging the historic arch of the building, which dates to 1910, said Carawan.
The company will also have a team of masons salvage 1,000 bricks that will be sold by the university as part of memorabilia from Matthews.
As soon as the old arena is down, Suffolk will begin laying the foundation and placing in the structural steel for the new arena.
“It’ll be a continuous timeline of construction,” said Kochilaris.
The new arena is scheduled to be finished around fall 2028, pending permits, said Morelli. The complex will be a multi-purpose athletic and recreation center spanning 310,000 square feet across the entire two acres of the footprint of the old arena and will house 4,050 fans for hockey and 5,300 for basketball.
