After months of delay, Cal State Long Beach’s replacement of Peterson Hall 3 was approved by the state board of public works and construction will begin in March 2008. The hall’s cost is estimated at $82.6 million.
The new 160,000 square foot building will be home to the departments of geological sciences, physics and astronomy, science education, and portions of biological sciences and chemistry and biochemistry.
The university has not signed a contractor or an architect yet, but it is set on using the “design build” approach, according to Robert Loeschen, associate dean of facilities for the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
With “design build,” the university is allowed to make changes to the design of the building more easily than with a regular remodeling project, said Patrick Kenealy, chairman of the departments of physics and astronomy. The contractors and architects will be more flexible, he said.
Although PH3’s renovation budget looked short at first, the legislature approved more money for the project, and the budget is now sufficient, according to Kenealy.
The new PH3 will have better electrical and data wiring, which will make wireless Internet more accessible, said Kenealy. The new building will have air conditioning and an astronomy platform where students are able to put telescopes on the roof, he said.
“The fact that [PH3] doesn’t have air conditioning isn’t good for research,” Loeschen said. The dust built up from the lack of an air conditioning system interfered with modern-day research methods, he said.
“The building was really run-down and pretty much an old lab building,” said Van Samrith, a junior mechanical engineering major. “I’m really excited to see how the new building turns out.”
There was little opposition for approval of the PH3 bid.
However, Mark McLaughlin, a technician in the department of physics and astronomy, published an op/ed in the Oct. 10 Daily Forty-Niner that asked “the CSULB community to stop this project, and to revisit the possibility of renovating PH3 instead of demolishing and replacing it.”
