As college students start to roll out of bed and slowly trickle into morning classes, contractors from the local community are already hard at work on campus building the future of the college. Every Monday to Friday from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., around 75 employees from Naylor & Breen, a construction company based in Brandon, Vt., are at work on campus constructing the new residence hall on Battell Beach.
Members of the Student Life and Facilities teams officially broke ground on the dorm on June 26 last year, and the project’s completion is scheduled for spring 2025. The final dorm will be over 87,000 square feet, and house 40% of the freshman class with 298 beds. The residence hall has recently reached its “dry-in” phase, meaning the roof and exterior elements have been completed, so that weather-sensitive construction can begin on the inside.
The new residence hall is one of the largest construction projects Naylor & Breen has worked on for Middlebury College.
“For the geographic area that [Naylor & Breen] services this is a large project both with respect to physical size and value,” wrote Tanner Romano, the current owner of Naylor & Breen, in an email to The Campus. “There aren't a lot of projects this size that are built in Vermont outside of Chittenden County.”
The new residence hall is only one of a myriad of projects the company has completed for the college. The first Naylor & Breen project was the renovation of the Bread Loaf Inn, completed in the mid-2010s. The company has also renovated Warner Hall, Dana Auditorium, the Adirondack House, the Prism Center for Queer and Trans Life, the 75 Shannon Street building and the Johnson Memorial Building.
“At Bread Loaf and on main campus, they have completed renovations of numerous small house student residence and have completed countless lesser scale maintenance and improvement projects,” wrote Norm Cushman, associate vice president for operations, in an email to The Campus.
Along with Mike Moser, director of Facility Services, Cushman works with nearly all levels of Naylor & Breen, including Romano and other supervisors and staff directly.
“Mike Moser and I are involved in all phases of a project of this magnitude,” Cushman wrote. “This includes planning, Trustee discussions, meetings with the architects, engineers and other consultants, and with prospective contractors. Once the project is designed, funded, and awarded to a contractor, Mike and I are actively engaged in all aspects of construction.”
Almost all of the current Naylor & Breen employees have worked on Middlebury College projects before. There are different groups for each trade needed for the building, and sometimes multiple groups working on different pieces of the same trade.
Naylor & Breen fabricates their own copper and has groups of ironworkers, masons and pipefitters who connect steam pipes to other dorms, among other specialties. Now that the “dry-in” phase is complete, the mason workers, who work on concrete blocks needed to construct walls and walkways throughout the building, are able to begin working, according to Naylor & Breen Project Superintendent John Drinwater.
Drinwater has worked on numerous projects at the college, including many of the aforementioned building and renovation works.
Drinwater is on site every workday and recently organized a cookout celebration to celebrate reaching the “dry-in” phase, which he described as a huge milestone for the team. He emphasized the long-standing collaboration and positive relationship between the construction group and the college, a sentiment echoed by Romano.
“We have been working collaboratively with Middlebury College for around a decade on various projects both large and small and have found the entire team at [the college] to be honest, transparent and truly collaborative,” Romano wrote. “They take the time to listen to the folks performing the trades and sincerely value our opinions. This creates a true ‘teamwork’ approach to the projects and helps everyone involved become invested in the project’s success.”
Despite being based in Brandon, Naylor & Breen is currently working on several other projects in Addison County.
“We hope to work on many more [Middlebury College] projects,” Romano added. “There is a great team at [Middlebury] that is excellent to collaborate with for projects such as this.”
When the first crop of first years moves into the new dorm, instead of beloved old Battell Hall, a Middlebury rite of passage may be lost. But those future scholars will gain access to an incredible new facility, thanks to the work of Naylor & Breen employees and Middlebury College staff.
Julia Pepper '24 (she/her) is the Senior Local Editor.
She previously served as a Local Editor. She is a Psychology major and French minor. This past spring she studied in Paris. She spent the summer interning at home in New York City, putting her journalistic cold calling skills to use at her internship doing outreach with senior citizens. In her free time she enjoys reading and petting cats.
