UC Santa Cruz 2009-19 Capital Financial Plan and Physical Design Framework

March 23, 2010

Chancellor George Blumenthal
Presentation to the UC Board of Regents
Committee on Grounds and Buildings

Thank you …

With me today is our Associate Vice Chancellor for Physical Planning and Construction/Campus Architect Frank Zwart. Frank is a UC Santa Cruz alum who came back and has been our campus architect for 21 years. He is also a fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Frank leads the team of campus architects and planners who guide the physical development of UC Santa Cruz.

UC Santa Cruz—a campus characterized by academic excellence

In September 2009, I reviewed with the Regents the campus’s Strategic Academic Plan, a document that guides our capital and financial plan. At that time, I highlighted some of our strengths, as well as the steps taken to increase our impact now and in the future. Some reminders …

Our campus design and location support and enhance the campus’s strengths. One way we enrich the UCSC undergraduate experience is by involving students directly in research. Our residential colleges and our academic core are designed to create a place—a place where educational programs and our world-class research environment interact at all levels.

Our proximity to Silicon Valley and the Monterey Bay has influenced our research portfolio—from our marine science and engineering initiatives to our top-rated astronomy and astrophysics program.

In addition to our 2,030-acre main campus and the 100-acre Marine Science Campus on the bluffs overlooking the Bay, UC Santa Cruz manages four other properties:

• UCO/Lick Observatoryat Mount Hamilton;
• The UC Monterey Bay Education, Science, and Technology (MBEST) Center at the former Fort Ord military base;
• 2300 Delaware Avenue—a 114,000 square foot facility that houses research and administrative offices;
• And, our planned Silicon Valley Center campus (at the NASA site in Moffett Field).

UC Santa Cruz also manages five UC Natural Reserve sites on the Central Coast—from Año Nuevo Reserve in the north to Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve in the south.

Our setting and facilities support our diverse community of scholars and learners, and our faculty are fueling our upward trajectory. By all measures—from the citation impact of scholarly papers to R&D dollars awarded per faculty FTE—UC Santa Cruz faculty researchers are recognized as leaders in their fields.

The action before you

These successes drive the need to update and expand our academic facilities.

Today, I present our 2009-19 Capital Financial Planand our Physical Design Framework. These plans document our success to date in creating the physical environment that supports our academic plan. They articulate the design principles that will guide us as we develop our campus while continuing to respect its beauty. They also outline the capital investment program we anticipate over the next ten years.

Physical Design Framework

First, our Physical Design Framework...

Everyone is awed by the beauty and rich variety of UCSC’s natural environment. This month, for example, Forbes named UC Santa Cruz one of “the world’s most beautiful college campuses!” From day one, planners and architects have worked to integrate the natural forests, ravines, and meadows and the campus’s buildings, paths, and roads in a way that is sensitive to the natural setting and responsive to the campus’s academic aspirations. Paraphrasing Ansel Adams, our buildings and infrastructure are designed to “fit gently on the land.”

Our Physical Design Framework details guidelines that do just that. For example,

• Build no taller than the surrounding trees …
• Maintain a continuous lattice of tree canopies and plant understory …
• Create welcoming sunny public outdoor spaces that contrast with the shaded forest in order to encourage activity and social interaction, and take advantage of natural light and site conditions to provide natural heating and cooling.

The exterior design and materials of our buildings grow out of each site. [Using forms compatible with their surroundings, our buildings complement the environment … rather than conform to an “architectural palette.”] For example, we will use compact building clusters and architecture typical of California’s coast at our Marine Science Campus. Ultimately, this campus will provide for more than 300,000 square feet of new research, education, and public access facilities while protecting over 70 percent of the site, including the Younger Lagoon Reserve.

The outcome is that we design buildings that encourage users to engage with their surroundings.

Five organizing concepts

The Physical Design Framework guides the creation of a built environment that is both beautiful and functional. It is organized around five unifying concepts that emanate from the distinctive physical characteristics of the campus and their historic pattern of development:

• Respect major landscape types;
• Organize development in a core-college configuration;
• Build in clusters;

… and connect major campus building clusters using a

• “Ladder” of roads and a
• “Warped grid” of paths.

Guided by these last two design concepts, we create a pedestrian-friendly campus, enable efficient use of bus and shuttle transit, and ensure that the experience of those who drive is clear and efficient. Roads are laid out to conform to the existing topography. The pedestrian path system responds sensitively to trees and contours, yet makes it possible to walk to all major classrooms, libraries, and other academic and support facilities within 10 to 15 minutes from nearly everywhere on campus. The paths create opportunities for informal encounters, while interpretive information fosters a deeper understanding and enjoyment of all the campus landscapes.

We have three major landscape types at UCSC— meadows, forests and what’s called the forest edge, and ravines.

We are determined to protect the integrity of each landscape type and to maintain and enhance the campus’s ecological diversity. The Framework provides guidelines for development in each area. For example,

• We take great care to maintain the continuity and visual “sweep” of our meadows. Most buildings are sited at the forest edge overlooking meadows or within forested areas.
• During project planning, trees and tree clusters of particular aesthetic value are identified and incorporated into building designs. Clusters of buildings, in turn, are organized to create welcoming sunny public outdoor spaces that bring people together.

In the design of places that promote intellectual engagement, we are guided by the core-college configuration and our use of compact building clusters.

• If you had a bird’s-eye view of our campus, you would see our larger buildings—libraries, lecture halls, laboratories, research facilities, art studios, performance venues, the bookstore, and student activity buildings—clustered in the campus core and surrounded on three sides by smaller scale groupings of residential colleges and housing.
• Within the core, academic buildings are clustered creating “science and engineering hill,” the “arts” complex, and similar concentrations of facilities. You would notice how well we maximize the use of the site and that the scale of the buildings is consistent with the surrounding tree canopy. You’d also see that buildings relate to each other and to their natural surroundings in terms of color, mass, and materials.
• Finally, if you swooped in for a closer look at specific buildings within a cluster, you’d see students, faculty, and staff enjoying their surroundings and engaging with each other in the plazas between buildings.

Building clusters are designed to create important synergies. These next two slides illustrate how we combined programs for the bookstore, a graduate student center, a career center, and a modest conference center to create a pedestrian plaza and commons that is a year-round destination for students.

A distinctive feature of UCSC’s educational experience is its ten residential college communities. These are arrayed around the academic core, dividing a large university into smaller, human-scale communities. Each college serves as a social and intellectual gathering place for about 1,200 to 1,500 students. Yet proximity and integration with the academic core facilitates student experience and interaction with the unique qualities of a major research university, and this happens as early as their first freshman course experience.

The LRDP and Physical Design Framework will ensure that our future development will be consistent with this core-college configuration.

In summary, these five unifying concepts—as well as the planning and design guidelines—will shape the work of future campus planners and design professionals. As we look toward the next decade and beyond, we are confident that the campus’s pursuit of academic excellence can occur in step with the preservation of our stunning site.

Sustainability

Turning to sustainability, UCSC was founded on a commitment to environmental sensitivity. The campus has a decades-long history of pursuing sustainable practices in campus-wide operations. These include energy-saving upgrades to mechanical and lighting systems in our buildings; programs that encourage alternative transportation, including vanpools, carpools, and bikes for students and employees; no air conditioning (except for special circumstances); robust water conservation; and cutting-edge sustainable food and dining programs.

The campus is committed to integrating sustainable features in major construction and renovation projects, aiming to achieve the equivalent of the U.S. Green Building Council LEED “Silver” rating or better. The campus currently has one LEED Silver -certified building, and five more buildings are in the certification process. The campus also is aggressively pursuing energy-conservation opportunities though the Statewide Energy Partnership Program.

2009-19 Capital Financial Plan

Turning now to our Capital Financial Plan...

At Santa Cruz, capital planning is conducted in service to our academic plan. Each year we review and evaluate capital needs and assess alternatives based on anticipated resources.

The 2009-19 Capital Financial Plan is an outcome of this campus process—and is consistent with UC’s current planning parameters about enrollment and State support. As a result,

• Our capital plan is justified by current programs and enrollments, as well as the resources we anticipate in this difficult economic environment;
• Yet our true needs are greater. Our Strategic Academic Plan, long-range development plans, and Silicon Valley initiatives warrant an expanded capital program beyond what is outlined in this ten-year plan.

To address this disjuncture, we have built flexibility into this plan by, for example, defining projects that can address multiple needs.

Our campus also is prepared to respond quickly to changes in enrollment, research growth, fundraising success, and State funding—and the campus is primed and ready to go when resources allow.

Plan components

To get down to specifics:

Viewing the investment in our ten-year program by function (independent of fund source) illustrates the overall composition of our program.

• Nearly half of the capital program ($394 million) is planned for core instructional and research facilities;
• About 40 percent ($333 million) is planned for investment in student-related facilities, including housing; and
• About 13 percent ($109 million) has been targeted for infrastructure investments.

About 70% of our anticipatedState fundingis slated to address existing academic space deficiencies or to retrofit/upgrade facilities. The remaining 30% will help us renew and extend our core infrastructure.

The campus anticipates the need for approximately $335 million of external financing, nearly all for auxiliary functions (housing, student-fee-funded, and parking projects). Each of the projects requiring external financing has been subjected to—and passed—the standard fiscal tests UC uses to ensure financial feasibility.

Plan objectives

Each project that appears in the plan achieves one or more of five objectives:

• First, academic program development. These projects address significant space deficits for current programs, including new facilities to support graduate instruction.
• Second, retrofitting/upgrading existing academic facilities to support today’s academic programs and to address older building systems that have begun to fail.
• Third, student life/intellectual engagement and residential life. We are proposing significant development of new student and employee housing, as well as needed student life facilities.
• Fourth, core infrastructure. Our 44-year old campus has significant needs in this area to maintain, upgrade, and extend core campus infrastructure.
• Finally, campus environment, sustainability, and life safety. The good news here is that UC Santa Cruz already has addressed serious seismic and other life-safety deficiencies, so we are proposing only one such project.

Maximizing our investments is our mantra at UCSC. Our Capital Financial Plan cites examples—such as the McHenry Library project pictured here—in which seismic renewal was coupled with capacity expansion and renovation to significantly enhance the role of the library as an intellectual commons.

Accountability and performance

Now, to address accountability and performance issues…

The Santa Cruz planning process incorporates participation by students, faculty, staff, administration, and design professionals. The development and implementation of land-use and capital-improvement plans is overseen by two standing committees:

• The Advisory Committee on Campus Planning and Stewardship; and
• The Chancellor’s Design Advisory Board.

We have created a framework of accountability that ensures capital resources are managed wisely and appropriately. The recommendations of these advisory bodies are made to Campus Provost/EVC Kliger and to me—and we take responsibility for final decisions. [Once decisions are made, the Campus Provost holds the Vice Chancellor for Business and Administrative Services responsible—in consultation with key stakeholders such as deans—for delivering projects on-time and on budget.]

Earlier in this session, Vice President Lenz proposed campus actions to address your concerns, as documented in the July 2005 Regents report on capital asset utilization and delivery. I am pleased to report that such accountability is already in place at Santa Cruz. Specifically,

• The Vice Chancellor for Planning and Budget is accountable to me for business case analysis and for reporting/metrics/benchmarking. The VC for Planning and Budget also advises Campus Provost/EVC Kliger of material changes to project budget, scope and schedule.
  • [We will incorporate new systemwide guidelines for business case analysis once they are available.]
• The Vice Chancellor for Business and Administrative Services is accountable to me for project performance.
• At UCSC, relevant principal officers and their staff meet as frequently as weekly to review budget, scope, and all major design and construction milestones. We will extend this current practice in order to prepare quarterly reports on high-risk projects for UCOP.

And, my staff and I look forward to collaborating with the President on the capital program leadership forums.

Conclusion

In conclusion…

UCSC is a major research university, generating big ideas and important breakthroughs. Our faculty understand not only how to transmit knowledge and hone skills, but how to ignite curiosity and desire in our students. They help students grow and become graduates eager to transform the world and give back to our state and nation.

The capital program before you is our plan to invest in the infrastructure to ensure that success!

Questions

We'd be delighted to respond to any questions you might have.