Strike Out

A worker's strike that occurred over the summer has delayed the construction of the new building on the Roosevelt campus by a full two months.

"The strike that occurred really put a crimp in our schedule, " said Steve Hoselton, associate vice president of campus planning and operations.

The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 and the Laborers' District Council voted to strike after their three-year contracts expired last May and an agreement could not immediately be reached for new terms. "We lost over twenty days [of work]," Hoselton said.

The strike also brought hundreds of road construction projects, including the resurfacing of the Eisenhower Expressway, to a temporary standstill. The strike began in the first part of July and the two groups did not come to terms on a new agreement for over two weeks.

Roosevelt commissioned a full analysis of the situation from The John Buck Company, the project's developer. "The decision was made not to spend a bunch of money on premium time," Hoselton said, but instead to reschedule the opening of the new building at 425 S. Wabash for March 2012, a two-months after the originally planned date of January 2012. Now the building will not be ready in time for the beginning of the Spring 2012 academic semester.

Since the strike was resolved, construction has resumed on the 32-story, $110 million structure. "All the bids are in, they're putting in the caissons right now, and the goal is ‘to get out of the ground,'" Hoselton said.

A caisson is an essential component of a building's foundation, and often some of the most difficult work to complete.

"The stage that we're in now is the biggest unknown for the entire project," Hoselton said. "When you're underground, you don't know if there's a big rock there or some other hidden obstruction."

Three-dimensional models of the building have also been completed, which can detect and analyze conflicts that may not be apparent in paper blueprints.

Once built, the as-yet unnamed building will join the ranks of Chicago's other "glass giants" such as the Trump Tower and the Legacy at Millennium Park. A full-size, three-story mock-up of the glass has been built in Miami, and administrators will be flying down to approve the work in the coming days.

Students may notice the large piece of fascia, which is still standing at the front of the construction site. This is the "Rabori Façade" from the original building, which was on the City of Chicago's "orange list" of historically significant landmarks. Though orange list status does not necessarily guarantee protection, Roosevelt chose to use the façade, incorporating it into the design of the new structure as the entrance to the school's new bookstore.

As for the noise associated with the ongoing construction, Hoselman said it will continue throughout the semester.

"We really tried to work in the summer, and our goal is to wrap these up as much as possible," Hoselman said. "But there may be a little bit of noise early on."

Additionally, there will be some minor relocation of offices as crews begin work on a tunnel which, when completed, will lead from the new building's cafeteria directly into the Fainman Lounge, but not until March 2012.