Publicly funded seismic upgrades may not cover much more than structural intervention. UC’s system-wide anticipated cost only allows some $3B (about 15%) for things like improved energy performance and contemporary educational needs. But seismic upgrades do provide a significant base of investment to build on, and that may form the basis of a federal grant, or entice some private donors to step up and leverage the initial support. It’s the equivalent of matching funds — private donations go much further and have more impact.
For UCLA’s Kaufman Hall, an adaptive re-use of the historic Women’s Gym, we assisted the University in landing its then largest ever non-healthcare donation. Years before, for the first Powell Library intervention, UCLA was able to supplement the budget with other outside funding for a significant transformation.
Recognizing that funding comes from different sources, we have adopted a tiered, step-function approach to the scope of interventions — a successful strategy for the remodeling of UCLA’s Faculty Center, a residential-scaled mid-century gem, where basic upgrades were sequentially augmented by packages of added scope, each level representing a coherent state for the end result.
