Price Center, originally designed for a university with
15,000 students and staff, is doubling in size to fit the needs of UCSD’s
growing population. The renovations, which will be completed by March, include
a new post office and computer lab, among other additions.
Currently, UCSD enrolls about 27,500 students and is
projected to reach 30,000 by 2010. Including the newly renovated bookstore and
a new four-story building, the expanded Price Center will increase in size by
about 175,000 square feet.
University Centers Director Paul Terzino said the new food
court — with eight additional restaurants — will feature indoor seating for 375
people, as well as outdoor seating for 160 people. The new design will also
help alleviate weekday traffic, he said.
“The footprint of the expansion is slightly smaller than the
existing Price Center, but it does add a basement level — which is the loading
dock — and it has four floors while the existing Price Center has three
floors,” he said.
Besides the new seating, a computer lab, a post office, a
bank, a grocery store and a hair salon, there will be more office space for
student organizations. Spaces have been reserved for the Alumni Association,
A.S. Council, Center for Student Involvement, Student-Run Recruitment and Retention
Center and Cross-Cultural Center, which Terzino hopes will unite the campus.
“There will be two new major entrances, one from the bus
turn-around at the end of Matthew Lane, and one at [the] Myers Drive/Lyman Lane
intersection across from the Student Services Center,” he said. “In addition,
there will be several other convenient entrances to the expansion. I think
students will be very pleased with the openness and accessibility of the Price
Center once the expansion is complete.”
Once the construction is finished, many of the offices in
the current Price Center will be relocated, including those of the A.S.
Council, which will be moving from the third floor of Price Center to the
fourth.
“With the growth of the student population, the expansion seems
to be able to meet many of the needs of the campus,” A.S. President Marco
Murillo said. “The central location of the expansion will hopefully improve the
connection between students and UCSD as many more services will be provided.”
According to project manager Jay Smith, the design’s basic
elements were dictated by a poll that was part of last spring’s
student-initiated fee referendum and incorporated into the Price Center
expansion project. In addition to the ideas presented by architects, other design
concepts were endorsed by members of the Building Advisory Committee,
two-thirds of whom are students.
“[Some ideas are that] the building should be ‘porous’ and
allow circulation through it from many directions and levels, and connecting
the circulation desire lines that exist on campus already,” Smith said. “The
activities in the building should also be visually accessible, meaning that
what is going on on multiple floors should be able to be seen from any floor.
The central atrium was established for this.”
In Price Center’s new atrium, there will be a
3,000-square-foot piece of artwork by conceptual artist and former UCSD
professor Barbara Kruger, designed as a piece of interactive campus
architecture.
“The piece uses a large wall high up in the atrium, as well
as 30 terrazzo rectangles in the floor throughout the space, and two large LED
text signs with a continuous streaming news feed to include everything from
international news to surf reports,” Stuart Art Collection Project Manager
Mathieu Gregoire said. “My sense is that it will be about time, about how every
day is completely different but also the same, and about how in all the
busyness of our lives, we guide ourselves with certain ideas, and each of us is
responsible for these ideas.”
The initial overall budget for the Price Center expansion,
established by the BAC in late 2003, totaled $72.2 million, Smith said.
“[The budget] remained [the same] through the development of
the design and construction drawings, although many ‘value engineering,’ or
cost-cutting sessions were required,” he said. “This was because, along with
real estate at the time, construction costs were increasing over 20 percent per
year in 2004 and 2005. When the project
was bid to subcontractors in 2006, it came in another 10 percent over budget,
so between some more value engineering and additional contributions from the
funding parties, only $4.4 million had to be added to the budget to raise it to
$76.6 million.”
Smith said the budget is not expected to exceed that sum. Of
the $4.4 million that was added to the budget, $3.3 million came from Student
Affairs and University Centers.
The ATM kiosk and basement-level loading dock are already
completely operable, and most of the fee-funded areas, which include the atrium
food court, computer lab and group study rooms, are slated to be complete in
January. The rest of the building should be finished around the beginning of
March.
“The construction is moving very much as planned, regardless
of some difficult unknown utility issues,” Smith said. “We will be taking
occupancy of 95 percent of the facility within 30 days of the original forecast
date.”
