The “dark cloud” of Harvard University’s stalled Allston science center notwithstanding, Robert Murray, president of Everett-based contractor BOND, is taking note of a slow but steady revival in academic construction taking shape statewide. And he’s not alone.

Bargain-basement construction costs driven down by the recession, coupled with a deep backlog of planned and permitted projects and long-deferred maintenance work has spurred many institutions to begin dusting off once-shelved capital projects.

“I think there are some really positive trends emerging now,” Murray said. “Holy Cross is going forward with some work that they had put on hold for a year. Wheaton College is going forward with some work they’d put on hold. And over the next six months, we’re going to see a lot of other colleges go forward with their work.”

“Two years ago, there was hardly one higher-ed institution that didn’t have a substantial building plan,” noted David Begelfer, CEO of NAIOP Massachusetts. But by the end of 2008, academic institutions threw the brakes on any capital project they could.

At the time, Tufts President Lawrence Bacow told a NAIOP crowd that his university’s reliance on its endowment to balance its annual budget, combined with the endowment’s exposure to market-sensitive investments, meant that Tufts couldn’t build counter-cyclically, as it had always done before.

“We’re far more exposed to downturns,” Bacow said. “We can’t afford to build hard costs into the budget.”

Now, Murray said, after a period of retrenchment, schools have begun putting more requests for proposals (RFPs) on the street.

“I think the universities are getting over the shock of the stock market,” he said. “We see a real uptick in the number of quality opportunities over the past couple months.”

The Price Is Right

In Murray’s view, institutions are comparing their damaged investment portfolios with depressed construction pricing, and deciding to build on the cheap while they still can. “The opportunity to take advantage of this savings will not last forever,” Murray said. “While it’s hard to predict how long it will last, they know they need to capitalize on it. Twenty-plus percent of a big number is a big savings.”

Even so, the building fall-off was steep, and the recovery has not yet followed suit. Just seven academic institutions floated project bonds through MassDevelopment in the second half of 2009, with only one, a $43 million bond for Western New England College in Springfield, earmarked for new construction. The bond enabled the construction of WNEC’s new School of Pharmacy building.

That compares to $1.5 billion in bonding activity in the second half of 2007 and first half of 2008.

Philip Laird, president of the Cambridge architecture firm ARC, said he has seen an uptick in RFP’s and requests for quotations for studies and planning work.

“Institutions are moving ahead cautiously, assuming there will be a recovery, and they want to be ready with plans to move forward if the economy continues to improve,” Laird said. At the same time, he added, there are still “no guarantees when projects might move forward,” as private institutions remain reluctant to take on debt.

Still, momentum is gaining at many of the state’s higher education institutions. In North Adams, the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts is moving forward on a new $38 million science center. UMass Boston is currently soliciting construction bids for a new $152 million science center, and has begun the process of bidding out the $100 million Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate. In Worcester, UMass Medical is plowing ahead with plans for the Albert Sherman Center, a $405 million research complex. And Boston’s MassArt plans to break ground on a $61 million dorm on Huntington Avenue in June.

“There’s some frustration at looking at construction costs that are down as much as 20 percent, and not being able to take advantage of that,” Begelfer noted. “As endowments improve over the next six to 12 months, I wouldn’t be surprised select schools that are able to borrow at low interest rates begin to take advantage of construction pricing.”

Slow But Steady

Frederick Kramer, president of the Boston architecture firm ADD Inc., stressed that while academic work “is slower, it has not stopped. There are plenty of things going on.”

The nature of work assignments has changed, Kramer said, as schools put more focus on efficiency, costs and return on investment. That has led to more work in building renovation and repositioning, compared to new ground-up construction.

Robert Keeley, president of Newton-based Diversified Project Management (DPM), said while actual construction starts have been slow, with institutions funding project design but delaying groundbreaking, he’s optimistic about the next 12 months because of the volume of planning in place, the stock market’s rebound and the economy’s stabilization. DPM’s academic group has also seen clients focus on renovations lately, while they await research allocations from federal stimulus funding.

Mark DiNapoli, the president and general manager of Suffolk Construction’s northeastern division, sees activity being driven by public institutions with access to bonding mechanisms. Suffolk recently won a $46 million contract to manage the construction of a new pharmacy college at the University of Rhode Island. The school was “so pleased with the pricing,” DiNapoli said, they’ve accelerated the construction timetable for a new $15 million chemistry building.

DiNapoli sees demand in deferred maintenance projects. While not predicting an explosion in demand, DiNapoli said, projects are beginning to unfreeze. “There’s a belief that this is the time to capture the value,” he said. “If you have the need, have the funding, the attitude is, ‘Let’s do it.’”