Wednesday, November 18, 1998
Regents consider mending hospital
PREVIEW: UC officials
plan to replace Lot 14, rebuild Medical Center
By Edina Lekovic
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Construction on campus will be far from over if the UC Board of
Regents approve a new project for the replacement of the Center for
Health Sciences.
If all goes as expected, the board will approve the $1.2
billion-plan during its three-day meeting at UCLA.
This project is in response to the damages caused by the 1994
Northridge earthquake, which left many campus buildings with
significant structural damages that are below current "life safety
standards."
Slated for completion in 2010, the project will mean "the
reconstruction of South Campus," said Warren Robak, a health
sciences spokesman.
The Center for Health Sciences currently houses the in-patient
care, research and educational activities of the Medical Center,
the Neuropsychiatric Hospital (NPH) and the health sciences
schools.
The new eight-story structure will be completed in two phases,
and it will combine the now 668-bed Medical Center, the 188-bed NPH
and the 120-bed Children’s Hospital.
After the earthquake, the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA) said that if there was another earthquake, the three
hospitals would be deemed non-operational, unless they undergo
significant structural repairs.
Rather than repair the current facilities, however, the regents
found that replacing the entire structure would not only be more
cost-effective, but would allow for needed technological and
infrastructural upgrades.
It would cost twice as much to repair the old facility as to
build a new one, according to David Langness, health sciences
spokesman.
"The hospital was built in a very old-fashioned way," Langness
said, "with a 1940s design and a 1950s construction."
Langness also cited the distant location of the nurse’s stations
from patients’ rooms and the presence of only eight elevators to
serve the hospital’s 500 patients as two examples of its outdated
layout.
The replacement of the Medical Sciences complex will allow the
project not only to reach completion sooner, but the amount of
construction will be minimized and patient care will go without
interruption.
The new structure, designed by renowned modern architect I.M.
Pei, will replace what is currently Lot 14, a retired steam plant
and a waste management facility. Essentially, it will cover the
area from Westwood Boulevard. to Gayley Avenue, just south of the
police station.
"One of the things that made this place (Lot 14) distinctive was
that the research space would be adjacent to patient care areas,"
Robak said.
To compensate for the loss of 1,450 parking spaces, the campus
will open 700 new spaces in Lot 4 and 550 spaces in Janss Plaza,
between the Men’s Gym and the Dance Building, prior to the
demolition of structure 14. The new hospital itself will contain
500 spaces underground.
During today’s meeting the regents will tour the current and
future site of the new medical complex.
They will also hear a presentation regarding the new Medical
Center and hospital.
Westwood homeowners are also expected to speak during the public
comments portion of the meeting.
The UC Board of Regents will be meeting at UCLA through
Friday.
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