Students on the Hill will be living through a surplus of
construction, with the construction of Hedrick North and the
renovations of Covel Commons dining hall, Courtside and Sproul
Hall.
Covel Commons dining hall, which has just completed demolition
and is undergoing construction, is set to be completed in late
June.
The constructors are now laying out electrical conduits, and
working on the location of floor drains and floor sinks, said Wayne
Chiu, project management senior architect for the Housing
Administration.
The contractors try to work early morning or late at night, when
people who work in Covel are the least affected, Chiu said.
Also planned to be completed in June is Courtside, which will
once again offer in fall quarter the 450 bed spaces which were
unavailable to students this year.
“We have repaired some previous construction problems …
and it will be open for students in fall,” Chiu said.
Considering the effects that the simultaneous renovations of
Covel and Courtside will have on students residing in Canyon Point
and Delta Terrace, Housing and Office of Residential Life officials
plan to offer construction mitigation to the residents of Sunset
Village.
“Construction mitigation had been delayed, but we have
been gearing up for providing mitigation to students,” said
Office of Residential Life Area Director Rob Kadota.
There are plans to create special study breaks and thank-you
tokens, like food and drinks during midterms and finals, Kadota
said.
“We will do things, especially on the second floor, every
other week, like provide treats or snacks,” Kadota said.
Sproul Hall, which is also undergoing first floor renovations,
will also receive construction mitigation during midterms and
finals week.
“Probably during 10th week they will be given
“˜academic success’ items, such as blue books, scantrons
and pencils,” Kadota said.
Sproul has finished demolition work and will undergo
construction any day now, said ORL Associate Director Jack
Gibbons.
“I think students have been very understanding and
accommodating about the construction,” Gibbons said.
Originally, Sproul was projected to be completed before the
opening of fall quarter, but the renovation is now set to be
finished in mid-November.
“We haven’t had major problems, but the work is more
extensive and slow than we had anticipated,” Gibbons
said.
Directly after the completion of Sproul’s renovation, the
Housing Administration will move from their current location behind
Rieber Hall to new Housing offices on the first floor of
Sproul.
Afterward, the demolition of the current Housing Administration
will make room for the new Rieber North building, set to be
constructed from November 2003 to February 2006.
Also projected to begin construction in November is Rieber West,
which will be completed in May 2005. Hedrick North will begin
construction sometime this month and is scheduled to be finished in
November 2004.
The rooms for Hedrick North, Rieber North and Rieber West will
be different from the current residence halls.
They will all feature tackable surfaces, on which students can
pin up posters, memos and pictures, and will not have community
bathrooms. Instead every two rooms will share a single
bathroom.
Also, the rooms at the end of the hallways will be suites,
consisting of a living room and two five-single-room clusters, with
each cluster sharing a 1.5 bathroom with two sinks and a
compartmentalized shower and toilet.
This new style of room, unseen anywhere else at UCLA, was
created due to Housing’s 10-year plan to guarantee housing to
incoming students for four years.
“We think single rooms will be more desirable for juniors
and seniors, who will also want to live with each other,”
Gibbons said.
In addition to the three new residence hall buildings, the first
floors of Hedrick Hall and Rieber Hall will also be renovated in a
manner similar to Sproul.
“The first floors are being renovated in order to better
serve the students living in Hedrick North, Rieber North and Rieber
West. We’ve improved and expanded them by reconfiguring the
front desk and mail services, increasing more program space, and
changing some of the space allocations,” Gibbons said.
Hedrick North has been successfully bid and bidders for Rieber
have not been sought yet, Gibbons said.
Hedrick North will be built over Hedrick’s current parking
lot. Since Lot 7, which resides under the intramural field, is now
open, it will free up more space in the Sunset Canyon parking lot
and Lot 11 for residential students with vehicles.
To provide more parking spaces for students in De Neve Plaza and
Dykstra Hall, an additional multi-level parking structure will be
constructed beneath Dykstra’s current parking lot.
Dykstra’s parking structure will begin construction June
17 and will be completed in June 2004.