Haring Barn, one of the original buildings of the School of Veterinary Medicine, is coming down to make way for construction of a state-of-the-art sciences teaching facility.
Demolition workers, using power shovels and excavators like precision tools, have been dismantling the half-century-old barn as well as four smaller buildings nearby, and sorting the materials for salvage.
The demolition will enable construction to begin this spring on the Sciences Laboratory Building at the Hutchison Drive site. The three-story facility will include 34 lab classrooms for undergraduate instruction in biology and chemistry. To the west, near the Life Sciences Addition, will be a 500-seat lecture hall.
"This is an exciting milestone for life-sciences instruction at UC Davis," said Phyllis Wise, new dean of the Division of Biological Sciences. "These buildings will help advance the campus’s already strong reputation for life-sciences research and education."
The School of Veterinary Medicine, at the same time, is planning new facilities near the Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital to house the Equine Athletic Performance Laboratory and other programs that had been located in Haring Barn and nearby buildings.
Haring Barn, though its walls still stand, is about 50 percent demolished, says Allen Lowry of the campus Architect’s and Engineers Office. Workers have removed partitions, casework and other additions made to the interior over the years. The barn will be gone by Feb. 1.
Haring Barn was originally built as a large-animal clinic after the School of Veterinary Medicine was established in 1946. It most recently housed treadmills for research on physiology of horses and other animals. However, the big yellow barn was considered obsolete and neither historically nor architecturally significant.
Workers in December began tearing down smaller buildings on the site, including a dog kennel and Haring Annex, which once served as living quarters and most recently housed the Center for Animals in Society, Center for Animal Alternatives and the Companion Animal Behavior Program.
Work also began in December to prepare Haring Barn for demolition, but the rafters and walls remained in place until the last residents–more than 1,000 bats–could be safely moved out of harm’s way.
Bat biologists from Santa Cruz, just before the winter holidays, spent two days handpicking the Mexican free-tailed bats from their roosts behind long-unused barn doors.
The first day they found a wide stretch of guano but just seven bats on the barn’s south side. They took those bats to a bridge in the arboretum where other Mexican free-tailed bats were roosting. "The rescued bats scurried right up with the others with no hesitation," said Paul Heady of Central Coast Research Council, a Santa Cruz research and consulting firm.
But the next day, on a tip from demolition workers, the biologists returned and spent close to nine hours moving another 1,000 or more bats from their roost behind second-story doors on the barn’s north side, said Sid England, campus environmental planner.
Heady rappelled down the barn wall to collect the bats and deliver them to his colleague, Winifred Frick. More than half of those bats were taken to join the arboretum colony, and the rest were released. The barn doors were then removed to prevent the bats from returning there to roost.
After receiving a report from Heady and Frick, the campus will evaluate whether to create new roost sites near the construction site for Mexican free-tailed bats, England said. The species is not considered threatened. England said he, Heady and Frick, after the Haring Barn bat rescue, discovered other large roosts under Interstate 80 bridges near Putah Creek.
The Sciences Laboratory Building promises to be the most modern sciences teaching facility in California when it opens in 2004 in the campus’ Life Sciences District near the Life Sciences Addition and Briggs and Storer halls.
In addition to laboratory classrooms, the project will include student discussion rooms, learning centers, offices and a computer laboratory. An adjacent 500-seat lecture hall will be the largest of its kind on campus.
Most funding for the $57 million project comes from a voter-approved state bond. A Division of Biological Sciences fund-raising campaign seeks to raise more than $10 million to fund instructional enhancements not covered by state funding, including new facilities for the UC Davis Herbarium, office space for Undergraduate Educational Enrichment and Outreach Programs, and a computer laboratory that will be devoted to training in bioinformatics.
Other campaign goals include a new botanical conservatory to be built nearby, and endowments for faculty chairs and graduate student fellowships.
As part of a $350 million facilities plan, the School of Veterinary Medicine is building the Veterinary Medicine Laboratory Facility and Animal Quarters and expects to break ground later this year on the Equine Athletic Performance Laboratory.
Kathleen Holder is communications manager for the Division of Biological Sciences.