By Melissa Prentice
Arizona Daily Wildcat
The UA has some unfinished business to take care of with the Marley Building Ä and the university now has the money and approval to finish it.
When the Marley Building was built three years ago, the allotted $18.2 million was not enough to complete the project, so areas of the building remain unfinished, including the entire top-two floors, an auditorium and laboratories on the lower floors.
"If you have all the money at one time, you should go ahead and build the building all at once. But if you are in a situation like we were in, you have to make tough choices," said Eugene Sander, agriculture dean. "We had to decide to build a building and leave much of it unfinished, possibly for up to a decade, or build a smaller building."
He said the concept of "shell space," or leaving part of a building unfinished until additional funds are acquired to finish it, is becoming more popular at the university as construction budgets continue to decrease. Like the Marley Building, Life Sciences North, Life Sciences South and the Center for Computing and Information Technology all remain only partially finished.
"It is easier to build a big building that will meet your needs over a period of time and then raise the money to finish it, rather than having to fund and build another building," Sander said.
But with approval from the Arizona Board of Regents and about $1 million and the promise of $5 million more over the next 10 years from the Marley Foundation, the College of Agriculture can look forward to the finished building. The building houses its plant sciences, plant pathology and entomology programs.
The project will finish "more of what is there now," including research and office space, laboratories and a 75-person lecture hall, said Carl Gajdorus, a senior architect in Facilities Design and Construction.
The project will not be as complex and time-consuming as constructing a new building, but since it is a $6 million project, there is quite a lot of work to do, he said. Construction should begin by the end of the year.
Projects to finish the shell space in other buildings are also "making their way through the process," he said.