Chinatown campus on path to completion as patience for delays runs thin

By Don Clyde and Jessica Luthi
The Guardsman

Construction on the Chinatown/North Beach campus will resume after the City College board of trustees unanimously approved several subcontracts for projects needed to continue work on the campus during a Jan. 28 meeting.

Due to complications in the bidding process, construction at the Chinatown/North Beach campus ground to a standstill. A number of bids were given to contractors before the state had signed off on them, resulting in a need to rebid the contracts.

The new campus project has been a long process that began in 1997, after a proposition to purchase properties for the campus was approved by San Francisco voters, board of trustees President Milton Marks III said.

Other board business Approval of tenured positions Twenty-nine academic employees were awarded tenure status effective fall 2010. A majority of the employees awarded tenure are from the English as second language department. Each employee went through a four-year tenure review process, which was overseen by a committee comprised of other academic employees. ADA Contract approved A $103,600 construction contract was approved, allowing GECO. Inc to finish Phase II Americans with Disabilities Act upgrades and barrier removals at the Visual Arts, Arts Extension and Horticulture Buildings on the Ocean Campus. Construction must be completed by April 1. Trustee Elections Trustee Milton Marks III was re-elected to his second consecutive term as board president, while trustee John Rizzo was elected to board vice president.

According to City College’s Master Plan, the Chinatown/North Beach campus was supposed be completed by December 2007. But because of snags in the design for the campus and construction contracts, the project had been postponed. The campus is now currently slated to be completed in 2011, trustee Chris Jackson said.

“I was getting phone calls from Chinese newspapers and community leaders who were alarmed that there was this delay … and in their imaginations, this project was not going to be fulfilled,” trustee Lawrence Wong said before unanimous approval.

Groundbreaking of the Chinatown/North Beach campus site began Nov. 1, 2008, but progress on the project was halted late last summer, according to Peter Goldstein, vice chancellor of finance and administration. Approval of these critical path contracts means construction can continue soon.

Members of the community were present at the meeting to encourage the board to approve the contracts so construction on the new campus could begin.

“The Asian-American community has been waiting for this too long,” Minh Hoa-Ta of the Asian Coalition at City College said to applause from many attendees.

Gus Goldstein, president of the American Federation of Teachers Local 2121, also said the bid protest process was “well conducted” and there shouldn’t be any further delays in construction.

“We have been delayed, and we can no longer delay the Chinatown project on what I consider to be not something that’s material because we’ve gone through every process we should go through,” Chancellor Don Q. Griffin said about the process for receiving bids for the Chinatown/North Beach campus.

The next board of trustees meeting will be held on Feb. 25 at 33 Gough St. in San Francisco.