Artist rendering of Telemedicine/Medical Education Building
For the first time in campus history, UC Irvine is being forced to suspend construction on two major buildings due to a state financial crisis that’s also affecting other schools.
The university stopped building the 64,000 square foot Arts Building on Monday night. The $42 million building is 36 percent completed. And the campus only has enough money to keep constructing the new Telemedicine/Medical Education Building (news release) through the end of January. The$40.5 million, 67,000 square foot building is 40 percent complete.
The state budget crisis isn’t expected to be resolved by late January, meaning that work on the Telemed building will come to a temporary halt.
“I can’t ever remember having to stop construction on a building, but we’ve never faced a financial crisis like this,” said Ray Dormaier, UCI’s vice chancellor of planning and budget.
UCI says he does have enough fund to finish four other major buildings that are nearing completion or just under way: Engineeing III (price tag, $69 million), Social and Behavioral Sciences ($62 million); Humanities ($38 million); and a $66 million stem cell research institute.
Cal State Long Beach wasn’t so lucky. It recently had to suspend construction of its new $105 million Hall of Science due to the budget crisis.
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I realize revenue streams can change on a dime in this economy. but 2 words: better forecasting
I thought these were paid for by donors?
With the cost of attending a UC campus out of the reach of anyone earning the median income, UCI has a $317 MILLION building budget? How about plowing some of that into tuition assistance?
I know UCI wants to outshine UCLA, but let’s not put the chancellor’s ambitions before the real reason for the university’s existence.
Dina: Only some buildings are covered in full or in part with donations.
Bp: UCI can be faulted for many things, but not constructing buildings. The campus has the highest “finish on time” rating in the UC system. No one forsaw the abrupt suspension order. As Dr. Dormainer said, this is something the campus has never been through.
Time to call Don Bren
Education costs got pumped up during the bubble. Tuitions have to come down, and they will.
What you’re seeing here is a byproduct of an imploding economy. There are too many things wrong to name, but here are a few to watch in ‘09: (full list at my site) credit card debt, ARM resets, foreclosure tsunami coming, falling house prices, retail collapse, commercial RE collapse, rising unemployment, …
UCI Budget your all wrong UCI is a research institution. The fact that students show up there is merely an afterthought. Look at the number of buildings without a single classroom.
just a personal pet topic therefore, couldn’t resist commenting. I stare at numbers all day (yawn) in the private sector - the equivalent of Mr. Dormaier’s department. lesson to be learned, before approving such capital expenditures, make sure you have more than enough in the coffers to cover them, either that or get out the red pen and start x’ing out line items before they get started. I’d be curious to learn if UCI, CSULB, et al only budget annually. or there really is some unknown factor - a revenue stream which was being counted on that was suddenly or unexpectedly cut…
Virtually all major buildings at UCI have classrooms.
I didn’t know UCI was a “he”
UCI needed this to slow them down a bit. The area where construction has always been NEEDED is parking, and hardly anything has been done with that. Right when MSTB parking was approaching a tolerable level they build up a bunch of trailers ON the parking lot (increasing parking demand while reducing availability). And a few years ago they build up more apartment buildings ON the dirt overflow parking lot behind engineering (getting rid of the entire lot). ><
At least with the stop in construction they can’t get rid of any more spaces (I pray).
Gary: Half of the buildings in physical sciences are devoid of classrooms, and many of the others are split research / teaching (Physical Sciences Classroom Building and the two lecture halls are the only pure-instruction buildings I can think of, and they’re the smallest structures in the School). Perhaps in the fluffier Schools there’s more instruction than research, but how much can you research dance or film?
1. “Virtually all major buildings at UCI have classrooms.” One of the recent buildings built is Bren Hall (for computer science). It has 6 stories and only the first one has classrooms. The rest are professors’, grad students’, and administrators’ offices, labs, conference rooms.
2. This may not have anything to do with buildings. As far as I remember, the UC Administration reached some kind of agreements with the Governor a couple of years ago guaranteeing some type of funding by the state. Can anyone tell me how that deal has an impact on today’s budget crisis? To what extent does that deal lessen the fee increase, for example, faced by students due to the budget crisis?
Finally…a well written, newsworthy article in the Register. Thank you Mr. Robbins.
“In 1950, we spent (in 1989 dollars) $1,333 per student. In 1989 we spent $4931. As John Silber, the President of Boston University, has written, ‘It is troubling that this nearly fourfold increase in real spending has brought no improvement. It is scandalous that it has not prevented substantial decline.’ ”
William J. Bennett, former Secretary of Education, in The De-Valuing of America
“Public education is a socialist monopoly, a real one.” - The late Milton Friedman, professor emeritus and Nobel laureate
The time to cut back on this educational gravy train is long overdue.
UC campus’s are some of the best values in the Nation. Boston College tuition is $35.150 plus housing