By Associated Students Inc. officials and guests were treated to a surprise tour of Cal State Long Beach’s new science building during the March 23 ASI senate meeting.
“I feel like we’re in the back lot of Disneyland or something,” Senator Stephen Thomas said as the group headed toward the building.
Vice president Lucy Nguyen was so excited that she began singing, despite the rainy weather.
Senior Construction Manager Mark Zakhour described the $102 million, 165,000 square-foot project as a monumental landmark in Cal State history.
“It’s one of the biggest buildings the CSU system has ever accomplished,” Zakhour said.
The new building is three stories tall with an extra floor located 25 feet underground, as well as an accessible roof.
The underground floor is dedicated to biology and includes wood and metal shops. The first floor is geared toward marine biology and features a shark lab with built-in seawater supply and tanks for housing marine animals.
Within the building are six lecture halls, each containing 180, 80 or 30 seats. The halls are designed in accordance to new standards, which will soon become the norm for the entire campus. Professors have already noticed their clear superiority to CSULB’s current lecture halls.
“[Professors are] already fighting over trying to schedule classes,” Zakhour said.
The second floor of the building houses the physics and science education departments. Then, the third floor is split between geology, which includes a rock cutting and rock digesting lab, and chemistry, which features chemical resistant floors.
Perhaps the most impressive part of the building is its roof, which contains two large greenhouses as well as an astronomy pad fitted for six telescopes.
Zakhour described the entire structure to be more technologically advanced than other CSULB buildings.
“The whole building’s extremely smart,” Zakhour said. “Much smarter than I am.”
Even the building’s water fountains have been constructed with a high-tech rising cap system that cannot be found anywhere else on campus.
“They’re on hydraulics,” Zakhour said. “It’s a Snoop Dogg drinking fountain.”
In light of recent natural disasters, some students were skeptical about the safety of such a huge structure. Zakhour addressed these concerns by directing everyone’s attention to the building’s inclusion of a seismograph.
“This building can actually withstand a pretty large earthquake,” Zakhour said. “It’s made so the whole building can actually flex during a seismic event.”
While the building is already open to staff, classes will not be scheduled until the fall semester.
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