IRVINE, CA-UC Irvine is frequently referred to as “Under Construction Indefinitely” for good reason. Being one of the fastest growing UC schools in the system, this 1,475-acre campus has taken on approximately 18 significant construction projects since early 2005 to accommodate for current and future growth.

One of the campus' most important undertakings was a student center expansion, which held its Phase IV grand opening celebration Oct. 25 and 26. “The last expansion that the student center had undergone was in 1990,” Marc Tuchman, director of the student center, tells GlobeSt.com. “When we opened that facility up in 1990 it didn't take too many years before we recognized that we were outgrowing our space. The demand was greater than the facility we had.”

Demand at UC Irvine has indeed grown. With more than 25,000 current students, 1,800 faculty members and 8,600 staff, the old student center, like many other campus facilities, would have been bursting at the seams today. Instead of waiting for that to happen, however, students, advisory boards, executives and other key university personnel chose to expand.

“We have adequate space to fill the needs of this campus to come,” says Tuchman, who has overseen the expansion of the student center since its groundbreaking on March 15, 2005. “As a student-center rule, there is 10 sf per student. In 1990 the center was 170,000 sf and the campus had 15,000 students, so it was the right size. The student center currently is about 285,000 sf, and we've got about 25,000 students, so we have growing room for several years.”

Aside from the student center, early 2005 ushered in a plethora of new projects and plans for the university. Some of its biggest included: the $78-million, 14-building addition to the student housing community of Palo Verde; the $371-million UCI Hospital that is set to replace the current UCI Medical Center – Orange County's only university hospital and Level I trauma center – that is to be completed in Orange in 2009; and the UCI School of Law, which, when it also opens in 2009, will be the first public law school in California to open in more than 40 years.

These projects are in addition to the $71.5-million, 290,000-sf student center that is now 50% larger than it was in 1990. University officials say construction activity on the various projects was able to continue despite a materials price hike because of the design-build process that UCI employs. This allowed the university to streamline the bidding and designing processes by combining the design, permit and construction schedules under one entity that would oversee both the design and construction of a project.

The student center, which has tripled its conference and meeting space, doubled its food courts and individual study rooms, and added a tower that boasts a nine-foot anteater (the school's mascot) that is illuminated at night, employed a modified design-build process by which the university provided substantial information to potential bidders in order for them to create plans that result in a design being approximately 30% to 35% complete before bidding commences. Only 10% of design plans are complete in a traditional design-build process. The students had voted to increase their fees in 2000 in order to finance the expansion. Today, an additional $89 has been added to the $47.50 fee that students pay per quarter for the student center.

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UCI Meets Population Growth with New Projects

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