Never-ending construction continues

Monday, June 15, 1998

Never-ending construction continues

PROGRESS: Last five years have seen largest amount of expansion
in memory

By Lawrence Ferchaw

Daily Bruin Staff

Loud noise, detours and construction workers have become part of
the UCLA scenery as the campus grows.

The current building phase, which began in 1986, is one of the
biggest since the original campus was constructed, and the past
five years have seen the most of it.

"The people who have been here in the last four to five years
have felt the great brunt of it," said Charles "Duke" Oakley,
assistant vice chancellor of design and construction.

Since 1993, eight new buildings have been completed, four
buildings have been seismically corrected and three have been
historically renovated. The price tag for these projects and others
adds up to over $870 million. From 1986 to the end of 1998, Capital
Programs will have completed about $1.5 billion of
construction.

"There has been a disproportionately large part of actual work
done (in the past five years)," Oakley said.

Students who have been on campus over the last five years have
noticed this construction boom.

"They’re always building, they’re always loud," said Diane
Lynch, a graduate student in environmental health science.

And UCLA is just catching up to the amount of construction that
needs to be done, according to Oakley. From the late 1960s through
the mid-1980s, the level of construction declined with projections
of decreased enrollment and less state funding.

The fund-raising system that UCLA put in place at this time has
only recently paid off for the university by enabling it to improve
facilities on campus.

The need to catch up was only complicated by the 1994 Northridge
earthquake. It interfered with the established plans of
construction and caused more interference to the campus than
planners had anticipated, according to Oakley.

The building most affected by this was Royce Hall, which spent
the past four years under construction to repair the damage of the
earthquake. The cost for this renovation was over $68 million.

The loss of Royce Hall to construction over the past four years
meant that a whole class has been unable to use the building until
recently.

Yong Cha has been here for four years, but only recently did he
step into the Royce auditorium for a concert.

"It’s limited my access to a lot of things on this campus," said
Cha, a fourth-year molecular cell and developmental biology student
who is graduating this quarter.

Powell was being renovated when the earthquake hit, requiring
further work. The library only opened in fall 1996. Kerckhoff Hall
also underwent renovation after the earthquake to seismically
correct the building, as well as renovate some parts that had not
been overhauled in many years.

While renovations have meant the temporary loss of buildings,
construction of new buildings can also cause disruptions to the
campus.

Three of the most visible of the new buildings, the Anderson
Complex (1995), the Plaza Building (1994) and the Bradley Center
(1998), added over 475,000 square feet at a cost near $100
million.

Permanence is not always guaranteed for some buildings on campus
when they are no longer needed. The Towell tent, which served as
the library building while Powell was under construction, was
completed in 1993, only to be taken apart this past year to make
room for an expanded Parking Structure 4.

The parking structure is scheduled to be completed in December.
In the meantime, parts of Bruin Walk have been closed since last
year, and the area at the bottom of the Janss steps has also been
made into a detour.

Over the next ten years, the campus will continue to undergo
construction to add new buildings as well as renovate existing
ones.

Upcoming projects include De Neve Plaza, the Morgan Center
expansion, seismic corrections to Kinsey and Haines, the completion
of the Gonda research facility and construction of the medical
center.

Oakley hopes that the new medical center will be more of a part
of rest of the university, at least in terms of how the structures
fit together.

"There will be a much greater physical connection with the main
campus and the medical campus," Oakley said.

With the amount of space available on the central campus
limited, construction will be moved to the outer edges of the
campus.

"The biggest changes will be in places where students never go,"
Oakley said. "We’re pretty much built out is my understanding."

Cha and Lynch expect changes but say the campus will still look
the same for the most part.

"The main structures of the campus will remain constant, but the
periphery areas, maybe I won’t be able to recognize," Cha said.

Oakley, who is also the campus architect, said he wants to unify
the campus more and soften what he calls some of the "rough edges."
He also wants to incorporate more of UCLA’s traditional
architectural themes.

"I would expect that (students) would remember most of what they
see and that what they see will be true to UCLA, only more so,"
Oakley said.

Capital Programs

Eight new buildings – most notably the Anderson complex, the
Plaza Building and the Bradley Center – and four seismic
renovations have been completed at UCLA in the last five years.