June 22, 1998
Contact: John Chandler,
(818) 677-2130
j.chandler@exec.csun.edu
The demolition of the seven-story tower, the only student housing on campus when the building opened in 1969, helps clear the way for future development on the university's 65-acre North Campus, including a planned biotechnology park and entertainment industry complex.
Under a $1 million university contract funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Clauss Construction of San Diego County will gradually dismantle the closed 147,000-square foot building using a 110-ton crane swinging a solid 6,000-pound steel ball, with completion due by August.
Nearby residents, including homeowners and renters in university apartments, have been kept apprised of the university's work on the tower. The contractor expects the building to essentially fall in place, and workers will be hosing down the site throughout to minimize any dust.
The start of demolition on the tower is the latest development in what is now expected to be a $380 million university recovery from the January 1994 Northridge earthquake. Through the resulting repairs to and replacements of various buildings, campus officials expect CSUN to emerge as one of the most modern universities in the country.
The tower demolition waited until now partly because other buildings the university needed to reopen took higher priority than one that was never slated for reuse. But FEMA replacement funds for the tower totaling about $19 million are helping fund at least five other new or improved building projects on campus.
Those include the future Arts, Media and Communication Building, a future Health and Human Development building, renovation of the former Administration Building into a new Student Services Center, current work to renovate Monterey Hall into a Community Services Center, and new quarters for the Health Sciences Department in the Engineering Building.
The four structures CSUN previously demolished include the 2,500-space Parking Structure C, which mostly fell during the 1994 quake; and the heavily damaged Fine Arts Building, South Library office building, and the east and west wings of the Oviatt Library, which were each removed last summer. CSUN recently awarded a $16.7 million contract to rebuild the library wings.
The $3.7 million housing tower opened in 1969 as Rincon Hall, a 612-bed dormitory for male and female students at the campus, then known as San Fernando Valley State College. Located at the northwest corner of Zelzah Avenue and Lassen Street, the building long has been the university's second tallest after the eight-story Sierra Tower office building on the main campus.
Edmund Peckham, a former university vice president of student affairs, said the name Rincon, meaning "corner" in Spanish, was chosen to reflect the building's location and the San Fernando Valley's Spanish heritage, also reflected in the university's Matador mascot. "It's sad," Peckham said of the demolition. "The building is so much a part of our history."
Yet the tower also had a difficult life. In its early years, 1960s-era student unrest led to problems and occupancy declined. CSUN closed the tower to convert it during 1974 to one- and two-bedroom apartments for more than 300 residents, and the building reopened as the University Tower Apartments.
In later years, time took its toll and the university considered a variety of plans for dealing with the building. Finally in 1991, a leaky water system and the new University Park Apartments student housing across the street prompted CSUN to close the tower. Then in 1994, the Northridge earthquake delivered the coup de grace by inflicting heavy structural damage to the building.
Long-time university employees and former students have mixed--and sometimes funny and touching--memories of the building. Bill Huntington, a former university housing manager who struggled with the tower's problems, said he has no regrets about the demolition. "That's the way it is. It served its purpose. It's just a hunk of steel and concrete."
But Raul Aragon, an assistant housing director in 1970-71 who now works in CSUN's Educational Opportunity Program, recalled a student leader living in the building being so frightened by the 1971 Sylmar earthquake that the student raced downstairs and outside--only then realizing he was wearing no clothes.
Gail (Goodman) Price, an alumna who hated living in the tower just after it opened, nonetheless has as one of her fondest campus memories smelling fragrant orange blossoms on warm summer nights while riding a university tram between the tower and a distant dining hall. "It was one of the most intoxicating experiences I've ever had. It's something I've never forgotten," she said.
Irving Jacob, a Northridge resident who was one of the tower's original student occupants and a summer tram driver, said he too has mixed feelings. While fondly recalling visits to the building by his now-deceased mother, Jacob said, "I think it's time to move on now that CSUN couldn't fix it."
Perhaps most unhappy about the demolition, though, is university plumber Doug Anthony. Not only did Anthony spend years working to hold the building's plumbing system together, but he also met and befriended a student in the tower shortly after his 1982 hiring whom he ended up marrying in 1986.
After the building closed in 1991, Anthony said he retrieved the two room keys for his wife's old apartment and gave them to her as a souvenir of the place where they met. "I've had a lot of happy memories of the tower. That was my first employment at the university, and that's where I met my wife and a lot of friends. To see it come down is going to be very emotional," he said.
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