Four years of low funding for building maintenance has changed the face of ASU, and University officials say the state Legislature is to blame.
ASU President Michael Crow said 24, or nearly 16 percent, of ASU's buildings are code red, meaning they are beyond repair.
"They cannot even be repaired to a level of functionality that can bring them back to some level of successful effective use. When we're done with them they have to be eliminated," Crow said. "The Social Sciences building is the perfect example of that; the fourth floor of the social sciences building cannot hold any weight."
Director of Facilities Management David Brixen said essentially the rating of red means it would cost more to maintain and bring a building up to standard than to replace it.
The number of code red buildings on the ASU campuses boils down to a $77 million lack of funding from the Legislature, he said.
"In the last few years, the state has not provided any building renewal funding," he said. "The University has only received 100 percent of that funding once or twice. In the last few years it's been zero."
The last time ASU was fully funded to renew buildings was fiscal year 1999. The Legislature funded about 23 percent in 2000 and 2001 and zero percent since then, ASU budget reports said.
The University uses a formula to determine the cost to fix buildings on campus. But the formula does not account for previous years, meaning each year the University gets further behind.
ASU has a differed maintenance level of just below $100 million, meaning it would require that amount of money to get all campus buildings up to date, Brixen said.
"ASU has been in a position of losing ground every year," Crow said. "It is an example of the net impact of underfunding."
Twenty-four of ASU's 154 buildings were categorized as red zone buildings in 2002, ASU maintenance reports said. While that number is not the worst in the nation, it could be better, Brixen said.
"It's on the borderline between OK and needs attention," he said.
Biology sophomore Katie Larson said she thinks it is in part the state's responsibility to make sure ASU's buildings are up to standard.
"It is a state-run university and I think that if the state is really committed to educating young people then they should at least make sure it's safe to be on certain floors of buildings," she said.
Interdisciplinary senior Vimal Bhakta wasn't as critical.
"The state should help out," he said. "But we're in a budgetary crisis, the whole nation is, so what are you going to do?"
Crow said new buildings are being constructed with the funding issue in mind and should last for 100 to 200 years.
"These things are tanks, they are built at the highest quality that we can bring to bare," he said. "Their quality is like nothing we've ever built before."
Many of the structural issues that have come up in recent years are in part due to changing times, Brixen said. The electrical needs of computers and the Internet were not concerns years ago.
Even with these concerns, Brixen said newer buildings run the same risk of being under maintained without adequate funding.
"If we get the building renewal funding, if that starts flowing again, those buildings have an excellent chance of serving the University for many, many years," he said.
He also said none of the campus buildings were of any threat to students and the issue was more of a financial matter.
"It's not [a safety] situation," he said. "Any area that would be deemed unsafe, we would evacuate."
Reach the reporter at rkost@asu.edu.
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