Construction
work keep school busy
By Akiko Sugimori
On-line Forty-Niner
Campus
facilities are improving at Cal State Long
Beach with the facilities management department.
The department is dedicated to keep the
campus attractive and constructive for student
learning, faculty research, teaching and
staff activities through the maintenance
of its physical facilities and grounds area,
providing quality customer service to the
CSULB community.
“We will begin construction of a new parking
structure very soon which will add approximately
2,500 new parking spaces,” said Robert Maxson,
president of CSULB. “The project will take
a couple of years to complete, but it will
help students find more parking spaces on
campus.”
According to Mike Jasminski, university
construction manager of physical planning
and facilities management, one of the largest
construction projects that is now under
constructed on campus is the Telecommunication
Infrastructure Upgrade Project. It provides
installation and maintenance of voice and
data communication services, along with
many technological solutions such as call
processing, voice mail and Interactive Voice
Response (IVR) applications.
Telecommunications also provide operational
planning and project management related
to voice and data connectivity. All construction
will be completed by February 2004.
“The Telecommunications Infrastructure project
is a very large project which will affect
the entire campus,” Maxson said. “When it
is completed, every building on campus will
be equipped with the fiber optic wiring
that allows for the speediest connections
for Internet and digital data.”
The brand-new building located in front
of University Student Union will house the
fume hood intensive laboratories of the
chemistry and biochemistry departments with
a total expense of $3,782,000. This project
was successfully bid in December 2000, and
was expected to be completed in early 2003.
However, it will take more time.
“The Molecular and Life Science Building
has 90,000 square feet,” said Jasminski.
The library addition and renovation project
will build an automated book retrieval and
storage (ABRS) facility, renovating the
existing west and east wings of the main
library. The ABRS facility will address
some of the deficit in library space on
campus and store some of the library collections
in a centralized location, freeing up the
west wing for new collections. Expansion
of study space that has shrunk over the
years will increase computer workstation
space. In the east wing, the space will
be used for small and large group study
space, mediated classrooms and offices,
costing $18,621,000.
Additionally, the project will also address
the needs of specialized library collections
for music by expanding the present satellite
music library in the northern part of campus.
Future costs of $449,000 will be necessary
to fund equipment.
Moon Bridge, an artificial sculpture in
Japanese Garden of CSULB will be replaced
to new one (exact same design) in coming
Sunday. Nobuyasu [Nobi] Koreeda, facility
management staff who works at Japanese garden
as a gardener said a “Huge crane, probably
the biggest crane in southern California,
is coming to set up the new moon bridge
Saturday.”
“After the construction, university inspector
has to come to examine the work if it is
strong enough,” Koreeda said. “The test
is really hard, but necessary for the security
matter.”
“Japanese garden is opened for not only
students but also all public. Here is a
place that everybody can relax and touch
with nature,” Jasminski said.
“It is very important for the university
to continue to improve its facilities so
that our students, faculty and staff have
the ability to teach, learn and work in
an environment that brings out the best
of their talents,” Maxson said.
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