Decade-long path to LiSci ends today

Today's dedication of the Sidney E. Frank Hall for Life Sciences - the most expensive building in University history - represents the culmination of a planning, design and construction process that spanned three presidencies and was fraught with delays, cost escalations, legal challenges and vocal opposition.

Discussions about the Life Sciences Building - the name was changed in May to Frank Hall - first started in 1996, under then-President Vartan Gregorian. Gordon Gee, president from 1998 to 2000, called the project his "top priority" at the beginning of the 1999-2000 academic year, only five months before he abruptly resigned to become chancellor of Vanderbilt University. Planning for the building was a key priority for President Ruth Simmons when she arrived on campus in 2001, and the Brown Corporation gave the project final approval in 2003.

From the first mention of the project in 1996 to today, University officials have held that the building is crucial to Brown's effort to ratchet up its initiatives in the Division of Biology and Medicine. The $95-million LiSci will house the Department of Neuroscience and the Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry.

"There was a very clear and widely accepted need for this kind of facility. The case for it had been made and made again several times," said Richard Spies, executive vice president for planning and senior advisor to the president. "We needed it as quickly as we could do it because we were missing out on opportunities every day in terms of the faculty we could attract, the students we could attract (and) the quality of the education we were providing for students."

In 2000, Donald Marsh, then-dean of medicine and biological sciences, said, "This building is a must if Brown is to be capable of performing modern biological science." He said the building was needed because the number of concentrators in the biological sciences had doubled over the previous decade, the University lacked sufficient lab space to recruit new faculty and existing facilities in J. Walter Wilson Laboratory, which opened in 1962, were obsolete.

When Simmons became president in 2001, "she was asked by some people to reconsider a set of decisions (about the LiSci) that had been made," Spies said. Some people wanted the building to be located somewhere other than the chosen Olive Street site, others had different programmatic visions for it and many neighborhood residents didn't want it on College Hill at all.

But the case that had been made for the project was strong, and by 2002 "the Corporation, president (and) administration reached the conclusion that we needed to go ahead," Spies said.

The decision to build the LiSci helped focus administrators, but it did not make their jobs any easier. "Once (Simmons) ... and the Corporation made the judgment that we should go forward with this project, then we had all the problems of actually making it happen," Spies said.

 

Delays, setbacks and frustration

"We have challenges on every project - that's the nature of construction and design," said Stephen Maiorisi, vice president for Facilities Management. "On this one - maybe it's the size of the building or maybe it's the location - there were a number of challenges that took place."

"It seemed like we never got a break," Spies said. "Everything that could arise did - in one form or another - arise. That's not literally true, but we seemed to have an unusual number (of setbacks)."

When Gee made the LiSci a top priority in 1999, he said he hoped the building would open during the 2002-2003 academic year. In 2003, when the Corporation gave the project its final approval, the building was expected to be finished in April 2006 - a timeline administrators promised as recently as last fall. Last February, they pushed back the completion date to this semester.

Among the difficulties University officials faced were legal challenges, zoning regulations and a complicated review process by the state historical preservation office.

To make space for the LiSci, administrators released plans in 2001 to demolish three University-owned buildings - one home to the Department of Facilities Management, another housing the Sarah Doyle Women's Center and the third used as a branch office of the U.S. Postal Service. All three offices were moved to other University-owned spaces.

The height of the building was contested in court, and administrators reduced the size of the building by one story. The building is 170,000 square feet, down from 186,000 square feet in the initial plans.

"There was some momentum lost when the building had to be redesigned ... because neighbors complained about certain features of the building," said Professor of Medical Science Arthur Landy, who served as a faculty advisor to several committees involved in planning the LiSci.

Landy said the design was "far along" when it had to be reconsidered because of the complaints and challenges.

In 2004, the College Hill Neighborhood Association and 11 neighborhood residents filed suit in U.S. District Court against the University, the NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy, alleging the assessment of the building's environmental impact was insufficient and that the building will cause adverse environmental and health effects that were not properly determined.

NASA and DOE were named in the suit because they collectively contributed about $6.2 million to the project, and these federal agencies were required by law to prepare an environmental impact statement. The original statement was released in June 2003 and found no significant adverse environmental effects.

The labs' use of biological and radioactive materials will generate hazardous waste, The Herald reported in 2004. College Hill residents say the building should be located in an industrial area instead of a residential neighborhood.

"Now that Brown has decided to have a second medical campus (something we pushed them to consider in 2000 and which they frankly refused to discuss), it's obvious this bldg [sic] was built in the wrong place," wrote Ronald Dwight '66, a board member of the CHNA, in an e-mail to The Herald, calling the LiSci "a terrible scar on the neighborhood, both aesthetically and environmentally."

In February 2003, Dwight told The Herald, "We're frankly scared of this building. It is an industrial building that should belong in an industrial environment."

Barbara Harris, then-president of the CHNA, told The Herald in April, "This is about the chemicals that are being used - the kind of chemicals. We wanted to be extra sure that it wasn't going to be hazardous air or even potentially hazardous air."

The lawsuit never succeeded in halting work on the LiSci.

According to Spies, the vocal complaints from neighborhood residents about the LiSci contributed to the University's recent effort to make its planning process "more inclusive."

"It became clear that the situation was more complicated than what we might have thought," Spies said. "Just because the University owns this piece of land and because we have a need to put this building there, it's a reminder that this kind of process is (important)."

In an additional setback, University officials were unsuccessful in their two-year effort to purchase the lot occupied by Via Via IV. Only about six feet now separate the Meeting Street pizzeria from the LiSci.

The project also encountered cost escalations, which Spies said amounted to a few million dollars. At a December 2005 faculty meeting, Simmons described the unexpected cost increases as generating some "dangerous moments" for the LiSci project.

"Right in the middle of the project, we were hit with escalation numbers that the industry hasn't seen in a long time," Maiorisi said.

Despite the fact that the project involved three presidents and three different deans of medicine and biological science, officials say the turnover never hampered momentum.

"There's always some loss of focus when people change," Spies said, though he noted that "the presidents changing was less important" because presidents aren't involved in the day-to-day planning details.

According to Maiorisi, key people involved with the LiSci project at Facilities Management, the architecture firm and the construction company remained the same throughout the project's time span. "They've been the constant through the whole process. That's a little bit unusual (to see) the key people stick together for that long," he said.

Landy, the medical science professor, said the building's delays did not significantly impact the departments it would eventually house. "I think once it was absolutely clear that there was going to be a building, then one of the major functions of a new building had already been filled," Landy said, referring to the LiSci's ability to attract graduate students and faculty.

"We already hired a lot of great faculty, and we would not have been anywhere near as successful if we didn't have this building started," Landy said.

Landy said department members "were pretty patient" with the delays, though frustrations grew with increased problems at J. Walter Wilson, including persistent leaks and heating system breakdowns.

Utilization of the building is still months away. The LiSci is currently operating under a temporary certificate of occupancy that allows for events related to the building's dedication and opening to be held inside, Maiorisi said. Administrators will finalize a definitive move-in schedule over the next few weeks, and the process of setting up the laboratories and settling into offices will occur during the semester, he said.

 

Immortalizing the University's biggest benefactor

With the dedication of the LiSci, liquor magnate Sidney Frank '42 - a self-made billionaire who matriculated at Brown in 1938, dropped out a year later because he could not afford tuition and, 65 years later, became the University's biggest donor - joins the ranks of philanthropists whose names are emblazoned on University buildings.

Frank's first large donation to Brown came in 2004, when he gave $20 million for a new building to house the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences and the administrative offices of the Brain Science Program.

Early plans for the LiSci included the cognitive and linguistic sciences department, but officials realized in 2002 that the building would not be large enough. Planning is now underway for 154 Angell St., a new building that will house the department at the site of the former Shell Station.

Later in 2004, Frank gave the largest gift in University history - a $100 million donation to endow a scholarship program for the University's neediest students. In August 2005, Frank donated an unsolicited $5 million to fund the University's relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Last May, University officials and the Corporation decided to name the LiSci after Frank as "a way to honor Mr. Frank and to celebrate with his family rather than waiting to do that three or four years from now," Spies said.

Frank's $20 million donation for the cognitive and linguistic sciences building, which was to bear his name, was reallocated to the LiSci building. According to the March 2006 Table of Needs, which outlines fundraising priorities for the University's $1.4 billion fundraising effort, $50 million was needed for the LiSci.

The name of the cognitive and linguistic sciences building will be determined by the results of fundraising.

Other business tycoons who have been honored with a building bearing their name include John Rockefeller Jr., class of 1897, and IBM leaders Thomas Watson Sr. and Thomas Watson Jr. '37.