Moving Back to the Future : Four CSUN Buildings Soon to Reopen

Demolition crews serve as a noisy reminder that Cal State Northridge still has far to go to fully recover from the Northridge earthquake.

But dozens of other workers are in the midst of a massive effort that will soon reopen four major campus buildings for the fall semester, three of which have been shuttered since the January 1994 temblor.

Beginning work at 5 a.m. on some days to beat the recent triple-digit heat, more than 40 movers are transferring old chairs and new desks, computers and Dickens texts, blackboards and bookends and file cabinets out of temporary trailers and other post-quake storage areas and back into permanent homes.

Typically moving from the top floor down, the crews are refilling the retrofitted and refurbished Jerome Richfield Hall and Sierra Tower, both of which house classrooms and faculty offices, as well as much of the Engineering Building. The Kinesiology Building, which was closed this spring to repair quake damage not initially discovered, will be reopened as well.

“I don’t think I’ve seen this much activity since the earthquake,” said Terri Sigrist, CSUN’s relocation coordinator. And then, “they were moving everybody out.”

Said Maureen Shideh, acting director of space planning and management: “For the students, this means nearly every class will be in a building.” At CSUN, which has completed about $190 million of $321 million worth of quake repairs, that’s saying something.

Thousands of classes and the offices of hundreds of faculty members--not to mention President Blenda J. Wilson and other top administrators--have been located in temporary trailers and giant white dome structures since the quake.

The current effort will empty perhaps 70 of the temporary trailers, Shideh said, with another 110 or so still scattered in clusters about the campus.

While he enjoyed relatively cushy temporary digs in the University Apartments building after the quake, English Department Chair Robert G. Noreen said he was happy to be back on the seventh floor of Sierra, where his office had been located for 25 years before before the building was damaged.

Not only does the new place come with a wood--rather than metal--desk, Noreen pointed out with a smile, he doesn’t have to share it anymore.

And, he added, the new blue-and-white color scheme is considerably more appealing than the old “institutional beige.”

Indeed, while the campus will endure heavy reconstruction for at least another couple of years, the post-quake CSUN will be infinitely shinier than the pre-quake version. “There’s no place else in the country where you get to build a new campus,” said Vice President for Administration and Finance Arthur J. Elbert.