An $800 Million Building Boom at UC Davis

Project Pipeline to Be Full for 10 Years

Two of the largest projects underway at the school's medical center in downtown Sacramento include a $282 million, Surgical and Emergency Services Pavilion and the $51 million Davis Tower phase three and four project. A $57 million sciences/lab building with a 500-seat lecture hall leads a long list of projects under construction on the Davis campus.

By Thomas York

The recently completed Genome and Biomedical Sciences Building at UC Davis (photo by Debbie Aldridge for UC Davis).

Projects in design or construction at the once largely agricultural University of California Davis campus now value nearly $1 billion.

More than a dozen major projects are underway or just completed at the main campus and at the school's medical center 12 mi. away in downtown Sacramento. And a housing facility on the drawing boards could turn out to be a huge addition to the Davis campus.

Allen Lowry, project manager at UC Davis, said the boom is the largest in the school's 97-year history.

"We have $800 million worth of stuff in various stages of design and construction-about 100 different projects in all, large and small," Lowry said. "We're ramping up to meet the ultimate enrollment number for the campus, which is well in excess of 30,000 students."

In 2002-03, UC Davis' classroom usage was at 100 percent of the California Post-secondary Education Commission guidelines, which means that all available classroom seats are utilized an average of 35 hours per week. Enrollment in fall '04 was 30,065, an increase of 5,000 students since 1999.

Lowry said one project in the early design stages is the construction of a west campus housing facility for faculty, staff and students that will be like a "town of its own."

He called the project "a monster" that will require years of work from campus planning staff. "There's so much more in the pipeline, we won't be finished for at least 10 years," Lowry added. "I have been here for 14 years, and in that time there has never been a pause."

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More Science Classrooms and Labs

Major projects recently completed or under construction at the sprawling campus range from the $95 million Genome and Biomedical Sciences Building--completed in December-to a $57 million sciences/lab structure under construction.

Joe Collins, partner-in-charge at Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership, a Portland, Ore.-based architecture firm, said the sciences/lab building is his firm's fourth major project for UC Davis--and one of its most difficult.

He said the ZGFP design team "decided to pull the building apart so that the lecture hall would be separated from the sciences building."

The 500-seat lecture hall will be used for general science classes. "It will be one of the busiest places on the campus without a doubt," Collins added. A nearby plaza will provide students with a between-classes study area.

Another major project has two new veterinary buildings replacing an existing 56-year-old structure. Once completed, the new structures will enable the veterinarian school to better meet accreditation standards. UC Davis is the only veterinary school in California.

The $78 million Robert Mondavi Institute for Food and Wine Science Center will be completed in three phases. It includes a hands-on research winery and brewery (rendering courtesy of UC Davis).

Jon Schleuning, principal at SRG Partnership, the project's architecture firm, said the veterinary complex features a leading-edge necropsy, or animal autopsy room, with 20-ft.-high entrances that will be capable of handling animals as large as adult elephants.

"This is by far the largest and most complicated project that I have ever worked on," Schleuning said. "The building has the same sophistication you get with humans except here you're dealing with large and small animals."

High-tech equipment will be found in the necropsy room, where a digester will liquefy and pasteurize the remains of autopsied animals so that diseased tissue can't escape the building. The final sanitized liquid can be flushed into the sewage system without harm.

The major construction projects have faced their share of major problems.

Irwin Tagatac, project manager for the Sacramento office of Howard S. Wright Construction, the general contractor for the $57 million sciences/lab building, said the job was delayed for several months in the early stages of construction because workers encountered a number of water and sewage lines that had not been uncovered and relocated during preconstruction.

"We kept hitting utilities lines that did not show up on the drawings," Tagatac said. "The project would have been completed last summer had the lines been moved before construction got underway in August 2002."

Additional Surgery Units, Beds at Downtown Medical Center

A $20-million mathematical sciences building is scheduled for completion in late summer. Los Angeles-based AC Martin Partners is the architect and West Sacramento-based Brown Construction is the general contractor (photo courtesy of UC Davis).

In downtown Sacramento, the UC Davis Medical Center Health System, which includes most of the campus' medical school, is also experiencing an unprecedented construction boom.

Mike Boyd, the medical center's associate director for planning, design and construction, said the campus has more than $500 million in new buildings in the design or construction stage.

"Much of the work is being driven by SB 1953," Boyd said. The law requires urban hospitals owners in California to retrofit facilities by 2008 so they can withstand a major earthquake.

UC Davis officials have elected to invest in modern medical centers equipped with updated utilities and information systems rather than retrofit woefully outdated facilities.

Two of the largest projects underway at the medical center include the $282 million Surgical and Emergency Services Pavilion and the $51 million Davis Tower phase three and four project. The projects will add about 25 beds, increasing capacity to 600 beds, Boyd said.

The 470,000-sq.-ft. Pavilion will feature a new emergency room, surgical intensive-care unit, 12-bed burn unit, cafeteria and operating rooms. Construction is scheduled for completion in April 2008.

The pre-construction phase took more than a year. Ironworkers started erecting steel in mid-January, after the project was delayed for several weeks due to an extended period of heavy rain, Boyd said.

San Francisco-based Swinerton Builders is the construction manager at risk for the project. San Francisco-based Chong Partners Architecture is the architect.

"It has been a challenge to take on a project of this magnitude," Boyd said. "We have taken the more difficult and complicated pieces of a hospital and included them in this project."

Boyd said the building features three new ICU units, as well as two 10-bed surgical units. He said one of the ICUs "was built in such a fashion that it can function as a bio-contamination unit, which can be used to isolate patients with highly contagious diseases such as anthrax."

"We elected to do this on our own," Boyd added. "We know from disaster drills that there would be an advantage to have one of these units available."

The Davis Tower phase three and four project has workers finishing four of the 14 floors left in shell form when the tower was built in the late 1990s. The Sacramento office of Jacobs Facilities Inc. in the construction manager at risk for the project.

Phase three work should be finished in September, and phase four completed in December 2006.

A third project, the $40 million, 122,000-sq.-ft. Education Building for the School of Medicine, will allow the medical school to house all four years of medical students together under one roof, for classes, lectures and research. Currently, first- and second-year students attend classes in Davis, while third- and fourth-year students attend classes in downtown Sacramento.

Construction got underway in December, and is scheduled to be finished in June 2006.

Sundt Construction of Sacramento is the construction manager at risk for the project. San Diego-based Carrier Johnson is the architect.