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Construction follows students around

Officials at Cal State Long Beach have commissioned several construction projects on campus, which they say they think will improve both aesthetic and practical aspects of going to school.

One major task entailed repairing and preventing flood damage to the Social Sciences and Public Administration building (SSPA). The building, which houses many academic departments – including Journalism, Social Work, Political Science, and International Studies – has made campus news several times after rains flooded the building. According to a 1998 article in the Daily Forty-Niner, Richard Outwater, who was director of facilities and technical planning at the time, said the building was built to close to the water table, making it especially susceptible to flooding.

“It is an attempt of our university to take care of water,” said Scott Charmack, associate vice president of Physical Planning and Facilities.

According to Charmack, construction crews are installing pumps and drains as well as sealing cracks in the building with special epoxies. Charmack said crews have been working two shifts per day for the past two weeks to finish the job, but they are now only able to work from 10:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m. because of classes.

“It’s a pretty good size project,” Charmack said. “We’ve got a basement there, and we’ve got high groundwater.”

Charmack said the repairs on the SSPA building should be completed by mid-September.

Students in lower campus may notice the walkway to the east of the Physical Education building has been fenced off. The walkway, which connects Lot 11, Lot 12, the music department to SSPA and the engineering and physical education buildings, is closed off near the tennis courts. For a portion of the summer, about one half of the outside of the physical education building was closed off as well.

According to Charmack, there was a leaking natural gas line beneath the concrete. He said construction workers are simultaneously putting in the first phase of a pedestrian mall to accommodate increased foot traffic from Parking Structure 2; the four-story structure created more than 1,400 additional spaces for commuters. Charmack said they decided to begin the pedestrian mall now while the area is under construction instead of waiting and tearing down the recently renovated area in a few years.

Charmack said the construction on the walkway should be completed by the end of October or early November.

Charmack said a building in the Isabel Patterson Child Development Center is under construction because of structural problems. He said the center’s dome was deemed seismically unsafe and that, although they liked the dome, it was more important to consider safety over aesthetics.

In addition to major repairs, he said crews worked on several areas on campus.

“We did over 60 projects this summer,” Charmack said.

Over the summer, new turf was added to the kin-esthesiology and athletic fields. Charmack said unevenness on the fields in previous years had been cause for concern. Crews also did work in housing buildings and fixed a few minor landscape issues. He said landscaping on the east and west campus roads was redone because the roads had irrigation problems which caused flooding. In addition, heating and air conditioning in Fine Arts 4 was replaced.

“I think what you’ll see is a general improvement,” Char-mack said.

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