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Construction of the Life Sciences Replacement Building, which will be built on the site of Hershe

Research facility to replace part of Hershey Hall

Funding for construction of replacement building partly dependent on passage of Proposition 1D

Melinda Dudley
Published: Thursday, September 28, 2006

Part of Mira Hershey Hall, UCLA’s first on-campus residence hall, is currently undergoing demolition to make way for the construction of the Life Sciences Replacement Building.

The five-story research facility will offer wet labs, lab support and vivarium facilities for the departments of physiological science, ecology and evolutionary biology, and molecular, cellular and developmental biology.

“The existing Life Sciences building was completed in 1954, and it was designed by people who didn’t even know the structure of DNA,” said Fred Eiserling, associate dean of life sciences. “This replacement building will allow our faculty ... to do cutting-edge modern biomedical or biological research.”

Construction costs for the Life Sciences Replacement Building are estimated at $138.3 million, and the construction should be completed in late 2009, according to the UCLA Capital Programs Web site.

The state plans to contribute $92.8 million to the cost of the project, a significant portion of which would come from Proposition 1D, a public education bond measure on the November ballot. The university will fund $45.5 million through external borrowing.

“Our ability to proceed with this project is contingent on voter approval of Proposition 1D,” said Steve Olsen, vice chancellor of finance and budget.

The Life Sciences Replacement Building will not only be a “green building” according to the University of California’s standards, but it is also unique in that it will be one of the first buildings in the UC system whose facilities are intended to foster undergraduate research alongside the faculty.

The old Life Sciences building, at more than 50 years of age, has never undergone a major renovation.

“The building basically had just become obsolete,” Olsen said.

Though the Life Sciences building will need to be modernized at some point in the future, it will remain in use as a teaching facility and as administrative offices.

The original 1931 structure of Hershey Hall, along Hilgard Avenue, will not be demolished because UCLA considers it historic. It will be adjacent to the Life Sciences Replacement Building, joined by a courtyard.

The plans for the site of Hershey Hall were not always to construct a new research building.

In 1997 it was speculated that the site of Hershey’s seismically unsound men’s wing, a 1959 addition whose foundation was seriously damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, would be replaced by a 900-space parking structure. This structure was to be part of UCLA’s effort to compensate for the expected loss of parking spaces associated with construction of the new hospital, according to Daily Bruin archives.