After two years of studies and consulting, Physical Planning and Construction determined it is less costly to move or construct new buildings for five on-campus buildings deemed seismically unsound by the UC Office of the President. Instead, the buildings housing KZSC, the Women’s Center, the Cantú Queer Center, the Redwood Building and the Student Union will individually be seismically upgraded or retrofitted within the next two years.
“At first we thought this as an opportunity to build a new building and put all these services together,” said assistant dean of students Lucy Rojas. “We’re talking upward of, I don’t know the exact amount, but multiple millions of dollars in terms of the costs to update these buildings, so we were looking at a lot of different scenarios.”
But Rojas said multiple feasibility studies showed it is more expensive and time consuming to secure a new site for new buildings and to construct them. However, the cost to retrofit the current buildings is still being assessed.
KZSC station manager Cassandra Cronin said her staff was told last spring of the physical concerns of the building and immediately were worried about the logistics of moving fragile records and equipment. A new building near Quarry Plaza or the Academic Resource Center came up in discussion, yet the move was still undesired.
“Most of us were trying to think of logical alternatives because none of us wanted to move,” Cronin said. “Needless to say we were very, very relieved when we found out we didn’t have to move. We will need to move to a temporary location so we’ll have to go through that process, but we won’t have to do it permanently.”
When Rojas initially approached students and faculty from the affected student organizations, she said the consensus was they wanted to stay in their current buildings, instead of moving or planning a new building.
The remodeling of KZSC’s current building will begin summer 2016 and is expected to be completed during the summer to minimize disruption of the station. The temporary locations are still undetermined. Rojas said some of the buildings will be remodeled summer 2015. All work surrounding this project is expected to be completed by summer 2016.
