Work on Engineering building will resume

Following a six-month delay, the construction of Levine Hall, the School of Engineering and Applied Science's new computer science building, is set to resume after graduation in May. According to Engineering officials, work on the building was temporarily stopped last November after it was discovered that the actual cost would exceed original estimates. The new facility will house the rapidly expanding Computer Science and Engineering Department. The building will accommodate 10 new faculty members that the department plans to hire this year. Construction of the building's exterior is expected to be complete by the winter of 2001. "All the floors need to be up before the winter hits," Engineering Director of Facilities Planning Ira Winston said. "The remainder of the winter and spring will be focused on the interior of the building," added Winston, who is also the information technology director for the School of Arts and Sciences, Engineering and the Graduate School of Fine Arts. The official projected date for the building's entire completion is August 2002. But Thomas Stump, executive director of budget and administration at the Engineering School, admitted that a more realistic estimate would be around December of that year. Once completed, the 40,000 square foot building will connect the two existing Engineering buildings -- the Towne Building and the Graduate Research Wing of the Moore Building -- to create a quadrangle and enable easy passage between all three structures. When construction on Levine Hall began last June, the estimated budget was $15 million. Of this sum, $5 million was donated by 1946 Wharton graduate Melvin Levine and $10 million came as a grant from the U.S. Air Force. But since then, according to Stump, this figure has risen to $20 million. The deficit reported in November totalled around $7 million, but was reduced to $4 million through what Stump called "value engineering," or reassessing expenditures to cut costs. In addition to office space for the new computer science faculty, the new building will hold a 150-seat auditorium for large lecture classes. "It's going to be a much nicer auditorium than anything we have for them right now," Winston said. Other plans for the building include an engineering laboratory called the Weiss Tech House, which will be modeled after the Kelly Writers House and Civic House. The house -- recently made possible by University Trustee and Wharton alumnus George Weiss' $20 million donation to Penn -- will enable any member of the Penn community to conduct experiments, or even just tinker, with electrical engineering equipment. The building will also house a Solar Car Workshop, a $225,000 cybercafe and the GRASP robotics lab, which is currently located at 34th and Walnut streets. Funding for the cafe came from an anonymous donor.