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Tag Archives: Cal Memorial Stadium
Nine Berkeley buildings win ‘design excellence’ awards
Nine buildings have been singled out as representing the best new design work in Berkeley for 2010-2012. Berkeley Design Advocates, a volunteer group of architects and urban planners, selected three UC Berkeley buildings, a restaurant, a senior home, two retail spaces — one newly built, one restored — a wine store, and the renovation of a branch library from a list of 15 submissions, and handed out the award certificates at a ceremony on Thursday, March 28. (See the 2013 Awards Brochure for full details.)
This year threw up a particularly impressive crop of winners, according to Anthony Bruzzone, President of BDA, who said that two years ago, with the recession having put the kibosh on many construction projects, the group was concerned it might have no buildings to consider at all in 2013. … Continue reading »
Tagged 2050 Delaware, Anne Phillips Architecture, Berkeley architecture, Berkeley Design Advocates, Berkeley North Branch library, Berkeley Public Library, Blum Hall, Cal Memorial Stadium, Comal, David Trachtenberg, Energy Biosciences Institute, Kahn Design Associates, Keetsa, Panoramic Interests, Premier Cru Fine Wines
Cal football coach Jeff Tedford sacked after 3-9 season
Jeff Tedford, head coach of the Cal Golden Bears football team since 2002, was fired today after a 3-9 season and a combined 15-22 record over the last three seasons. Tedford was the highest paid state employee in California, with a salary of $2.3 million a year. His contract with Cal ran through the 2015 season.
“This was an extraordinarily difficult decision, one that required a thorough and thoughtful analysis of a complex set of factors,” Cal Athletic Director Sandy Barbour said in a press statement. “Ultimately, I believed that we needed a change in direction to get our program back on the right track. Cal football is integral to our department and our university, and its influence can be felt well beyond the walls of Memorial Stadium. The program clearly serves as an important part of the connective tissue that binds our community together, and it is imperative that Cal football be recognized as a leader in competitive success, academic achievement and community engagement.” … Continue reading »
Cal Memorial Stadium unveiled after 21-month renovation
On Friday, the great and the good of UC Berkeley unveiled the newly renovated Memorial Stadium, the result of more than 30 years of planning, $321 million in pledged funding, many feats of seismic engineering, and 21 months of construction.
The project encountered some unexpected obstacles along the way, not least the presence of a group of protesters who spent 19 months perched in trees on the university property in a bid to prevent their removal. “Very colorful, as only Berkeley can produce,” said UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau recalling the episode. He stressed, however, that he was confident everyone will be nothing less than awed with the revamped shrine to Cal football. … Continue reading »
With stadium reopening near, Cal revamps ticket sales
See update at bottom of article
Three weeks before the refurbished Cal Memorial Stadium is set to open, university officials are taking a new, more aggressive, approach to selling the premium seats that are the backbone of the stadium’s financing plan.
Instead of relying on Cal’s sports development office to reach out to loyal alums, the athletic department is hiring a professional sales staff to target prospects, according to Solomon (Solly) Fulp, the athletic department’s COO. Officials hope the outreach program will jump-start sales for the Endowment Seating Program, which offers ticket holders premium club seats for 30 years for prices ranging from $40,000 to $225,000.
Cal has sold about 70% of its 3,200 premium seats and has raised $145 million through the Endowment Seating Program, well short of its $309 million goal, according to the Cal Bears website. The university has only sold 14 premium seats since Dec. 2011, according to the website, a rate that is lower than officials expected. … Continue reading »
Old Cal Memorial Stadium for sale, one bleacher at a time
Cal fans might describe Eric Gellerman as a hero. Gellerman is a wood aficionado who owns Berkeley’s salvaged wood furniture store, The Wooden Duck. A few weeks ago, he discovered that all the bleachers that had been torn out of Memorial Stadium as part of its major retrofit were sitting in a warehouse in Oakland bound for an uncertain future in Mexico.
Gellerman knew he had to save them, particularly when he saw the long, paint-stained lengths of wood stamped with seat numbers on both sides. There was more than 90 years worth of history and all manner of emotions ingrained into those bleachers.
But, initially, even Gellerman didn’t even realize what a trove he had stumbled upon.
“I was shown some samples that were Douglas Fir,” he said recently at The Wooden Duck’s headquarters overlooking I-80 and the bay. “I loved the numbered wood and agreed to buy 20,000 linear feet of it.” … Continue reading »
Piedmont Ave reopened: new road, sidewalk, bike path
Those of you who take Berkeley’s Piedmont Avenue regularly to get from A to B will be delighted to have seen that the northbound lane has reopened — and it’s much enhanced since it was closed off to enable the construction work being undertaken at Cal Memorial Stadium.
The street has been repaved, there’s a spanking new bike lane, new vintage-style street lighting and a wide sidewalk. A significant improvement is that all the street’s overhead power lines have been … Continue reading »
Final section of press box is installed at Memorial Stadium
On Tuesday, a giant mobile crane lifted the final section of the 300-foot long press-box frame into place at the Cal Memorial Stadium — a significant step in the $321 million renovation project that is scheduled to be completed 11 months from now, in time for the first game of the fall 2012 season.
It took 40 minutes to hoist the 355,000 pound section of steel I-beams into place, according to a report in the Chronicle. David Friedman of Forell-Elsesser, the San Francisco-based structural engineers of the project, said: ”Today’s event is a milestone because this press box is really the crown jewel of the project.”
While the new 80 ft, two-story box removed a slice of Bay view from the east rim of the stadium, on game days the box will accommodate sports reporters, coaches, officials, alumni and donors, providing an outstanding view of the field and a spectacular view of the bay. … Continue reading »
Tagged Cal Memorial Stadium, UC Berkeley
UC Berkeley’s best work on renovating Memorial Stadium
Some of UC Berkeley’s best brains are at work rebuilding the university’s Memorial Stadium from the ground up. Watch the video above to see how it’s being done — and read the story over at UC Berkeley News Center, which includes another video showing a simulation of how the stadium would move during a strong earthquake.
Related:
Inside Berkeley’s newest, most discreet building [08.08.11]
Tagged Cal Memorial Stadium, UC Berkeley
Inside Berkeley’s newest, most discreet, building
In a few weeks, a brand new, 145,000 sq. ft. building will open its doors in Berkeley. Architects, engineers and construction crews have been working on it for almost three years, and the scale of the endeavor cannot be underestimated. However it’s likely you haven’t even spotted this building; and, even when it’s fully operational by the beginning of next year, it will continue to be largely hidden from public view.
Cal’s new Student-Athlete High Performance Center, built at a cost of $150 million in private donations, has been designed to be almost entirely invisible. Sited largely underground, it hugs the west side of the Memorial Stadium. From the street, the facility appears to be simply a long, stone-clad wall which follows the curve of the stadium.
“The beauty of the design is that it maximizes views of the stadium and keeps that as the architectural focus,” said Bob Milano, Assistant Athletic Director at UC Berkeley as he took this reporter on a tour.
Road closure adds more woes for UC Berkeley neighbors
By Niclas Ericsson
The east side of Piedmont Avenue – one of the main routes across the top of the UC Berkeley campus – was shut down May 23 for the summer, leading some nearby residents to complain about the continuing disruption caused by construction projects in the area.
James McClury, an architecture student, said getting around the east side of campus has been difficult this year with all the construction vehicles clogging the roads, and he expected the traffic situation to grow worse with the closure of Piedmont Avenue.
“But it’s impossible to stop it,” said McClury. “The university is like the guerrilla gorilla of Berkeley, they can do whatever they want.”
Jack Chang, who was packing up to leave for his summer holidays, said he not happy about the closing down of one lane of Piedmont Avenue.
“That’s going to be a mess,” he said. … Continue reading »
Inside Memorial Stadium’s quake retrofit
Julian Smith delves inside some of the engineering of Memorial Stadium’s quake retrofit in the current issue of Wired. The video above explains two of the more clever aspects of the retrofit: the two free-floating surface rupture blocks and the support walls and shock absorbers for the press box.
Tagged Cal Memorial Stadium
BBC checks out Memorial Stadium fault — by chopper
A couple of weeks ago — darn, how did we miss this? — the BBC touched down by helicopter at California Memorial Stadium to film a segment for the show Naked Earth BBC series Naked Earth, which is likely to be renamed when it broadcasts in the US to avoid confusion with a National Geographic series.
According to Andrea Hicklin, who works in media relations at UC, on August 26 about eight crew members arrived to get footage of the … Continue reading »
