Time flies when you’re replacing buildings.

It’s been just about two years, but the new replacement building for the old Warren Hall is nearly complete. Unfortunately for graduates and students that have been here since Warren Hall closed in 2011, they will not get to enjoy the fruits of Cal State East Bay’s labor.

“I park in the back every day so it is pretty cool to see the progress and how far the process has come,” CSUEB senior Randy Medina said. “Sucks I won’t get to actually use it since I’ll be gone, but it’s great for the school.”

Warren Hall was demolished on August 17, 2013, primarily because of concerns over the safety of the building during an earthquake. According to the CSUEB Facilities Development and Operations Department website, the “Major Project” was scheduled to be completed this month. However, according to Keat Saw, CSUEB Director of Planning, Design and Construction, “The June completion date was an early estimate. The contractual completion deadline was always late August.”

The project costs $38 million to complete and according to the FDO Department the funding comes from “a lease revenue bond from the chancellor’s office that was provided by the state government.” The new five-story building, which has been named the Academic Services Building, will be over 67,000 square feet and house not only student support and administrative functions, but also over 100 faculty offices, according to the project summary.

On Jan. 22, 2013 the CSU Board of Trustees approved $50 million to replace Warren Hall, which was rated the least safe building in an earthquake for any campus by the CSU Seismic Review Board in 2010. CSU officials said in a press release on their website that Warren Hall could have been seismically retrofitted for $31 million, but officials decided to demolish it and build the new one instead.

For CSUEB senior transfer student from Ohlone College in Fremont, Bryan Makanpa, the construction on campus is nothing new. He was a student at the junior college during part of its major campus renovation.

“My last year at Ohlone they were doing construction and it sucked,” Makanpa said. “It changed everything, I actually had a class in a portable. Here [CSUEB], it isn’t that bad at all. I guess I’m just used to being on a campus with buildings I won’t get to use.”

According to the project summary, the new building has been built with sustainability in mind and, “will be a gravity load-bearing steel structure with special reinforced concrete shear walls designed to support the cantilevered upper levels.” It also states that the exterior of the building will also contain precast concrete, a material that is “supposed to require minimal maintenance.”

Several sustainable features are part of the new building that include water-efficient landscaping and plumbing fixtures, high efficiency HVAC, day lighting and a ‘cool roof’ which is “a white thermoplastic PVC membrane roofing material with a solar reflective index higher than 104,” designed to increase sustainability according to Saw.

Accessibility Services, DCIE (Continuing Education, American Language Program, International Education), Educational Opportunity Program, Faculty Development, Service Learning, Office of Research & Sponsored Programs, Academic Senate, Parking Services and the Welcome Center will all call the new building home once it is complete in late August.

In addition to the new building, new parking lots where Warren Hall used to stand are set to be complete by the Fall 2015 quarter. CSUEB Parking and Transportation Services Manager Derrick Lobo told The Pioneer in April that as many as 400 spaces will be split between the new two lots, one for staff and the other for general student parking.

These are just two of several projects listed as complete or in progress on the CSUEB FDO website and there are no future projects, major or minor, currently listed.

For new and current students these facilities will make life at CSUEB much easier, but for graduating seniors the construction will just be a part of their college experience.