At an hour when most students still lay sleeping in bed, a minor
drama unfolded on the A-level of Ackerman Union early Monday
morning.
It was 6:15 a.m., and water was spraying into the UCLA
Store.
While working on the fire sprinkler system of the future Jamba
Juice eatery, to be debuted in mid-May, the work crew took off a
sprinkler head, releasing a spray of running water.
The resulting shower seeped through the floor, which had not yet
been sealed, and into the market area of the UCLA Store one level
below.
“It was not a deluge of water, but it certainly was a
problem,” said Roy Champawat, a UCLA food service director.
“(Somewhere between) two to 10 gallons escaped before they
were able to stop it.”
The water leakage caused minor damage to the merchandise in the
UCLA Store, particularly the gift cards in the market area, some of
which had to be thrown out.
UCLA Store manager Jan Griwach said the damage amounted to
around $1,350 in repairs.
Associated Students UCLA representatives said there was no
extensive damage done to the Jamba Juice work site.
In order to reduce the damage, store workers draped tarps over
the shelving units and closed off the market area for a few hours.
Because the leakage began early in the morning, they were able to
reopen the market area to the public by 9:30 a.m., which Griwach
said prevented any substantial reduction in sales.
“We do get a few customers who come in for breakfast items
and such in the morning, so we did lose some (financial) volume,
but overall we had a good day,” Griwach said.
Though neither Griwach nor Student Union Director Jerry Mann
could recall a recent time when similar water damage occurred, Mann
said water leakage was not a rare occurrence.
“With a building like Ackerman, where you have multiple
floors and multiple functions from time to time, flooding
happens,” Mann said.
“We have food service on two of the five floors, and
whether it’s because of construction, a drain that gets
clogged, or a pipe that breaks, you’ll have floods from time
to time. We just have to take preventative measures and act quickly
to deal with the problems when they do occur,” he said.
Currently, ASUCLA representatives are unsure if they will seek
reparations from the construction team, Mann said.
Champawat said the water leakage would not affect the
construction timeline of the Jamba Juice restaurant, though
construction can be hard to predict.
He estimated a high amount of success for the future Jamba
Juice, which will provide a lounge for students to relax and
study.
Champawat added that the UCLA venue will consist of Jamba
Juice’s largest seating area across the nation.
With the beginning of construction for Jamba Juice in late
February, ASUCLA moved the X-Cape arcade to the Viewpoint Lounge,
eliciting mixed responses of regret and ambivalence from
students.
Mann said most of the reactions from students have reflected a
strong desire to return the Viewpoint Lounge back to a quiet study
space.
“Right now, we’re still in the process of examining
how well the video game X-Cape concept works in the Viewpoint
Lounge,” Mann said. “We’re definitely going to
put PC or online gaming in the remodeled Cooperage, but whether we
maintain the X-Cape video console game concept is what we’re
going to be looking at over the course of the next few
months.”
For ASUCLA, the decision to keep or get rid of X-Cape is a
matter of deciding whether or not the lounge space should be used
as a way to generate revenue or to serve the students as a study
area.
The X-Cape arcade generates revenue through a commission that
the console vendor pays ASUCLA, which helps to offset the cost of
maintaining the arcade area, Mann said. He did not have any
specific figures relating to the commissions received.
For now, the X-Cape arcade will remain in the Viewpoint Lounge
until the new Cooperage opens this fall, by which time ASUCLA
representatives expect to have made their final decision.