The Buzz in Berkeley: University Village and 'Bio' Building

By Thomas York

Construction crews excavated 80 ft. below grade for the 11-story Stanley Biosciences and Bioengineering Facility at UC Berkeley. The building will be completed in April 2006. photo courtesy of McCarthy Building Cos.

UC Berkeley is set this quarter to launch a $135 million University Village mixed-use project on a 26-acre site within the Albany city limits, 3 mi. from campus. The project will feature about 600 units of student and faculty housing plus 70,000 sq. ft. of retail space and parking. Completion is set for August 2007.

Student housing construction specialists Allen & O'Hara Inc. of Memphis, Tenn., and Ecumenical Association for Housing of San Rafael are the developers, while Berkeley- based ELS Architecture and Urban Design and Oakland-based Pyatok Architects are the designers. San Francisco-based Swinerton Builders is the general contractor.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco office of McCarthy Building Cos. Inc. is moving ahead with construction of the $162 million Stanley Biosciences and Bioengineering Facility on the UC Berkeley campus. The finished structure will house the campus's biomedical research activities.

Completion of the construction phase, which got under way in April, is set for April 2006.

The 290,000-sq.-ft. facility features 11 stories, three underground, which involves digging to a depth of 80 ft.

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Crews drilled 1,600 80-ft.-deep holes into the hillside and installed 1.5-in. soil nails into the holes to help stabilize the site. They then covered the ground with 6 in. of shotcrete before adding waterproofing to the ground.

"It's a deep excavation," said Jim Steward, McCarthy project director. "We're at the bottom of the hole, we've set the crane tower and we're ready to come up with the building."

Portland, Ore.-based Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership is the architect.