Douglass Hall Update #5

6/1/1998

Hello once again. As summer approaches, I look forward to not being constantly buried under a pile of work. Likewise, the people working on the construction site also look forward to the summer because they will no longer have to fight their way through the mud! Unless El Niño comes back to haunt us, The Hall is still slated to be complete around July 20th.

During late April and early May, workmen finished installing the last of the steel girders inside The Hall, clearing the way for the other subcontractors to begin installing the plumbing and electricity facilities inside the building. If you've seen the back of The Hall recently, you may have noticed some workmen attaching paper-bag colored boards to the exterior of the building. This layer of material will hold the stucco exteriors of the building, which will be put on shortly. Towards the end of May and into June, even more contractors will inundate the construction site, installing doors, flooring, interior walls and fixtures. Some of you may have noticed a lot of noise coming from what seems to be the roof of the older part of The Hall. That noise emanated from a group of workmen who were temporarily removing the roof of The Hall in preparation for the installation of steel braces inside The Hall. At the same time, the new section of the Hall saw the installation of its own roof. Shortly after that, window glazers will install the glass windows to be used in The Hall and the elevator, which will be located in the corner of the old Hall. Throughout June, various finishing touches will be put on the building, as perhaps forty to fifty contractors may be swarming the site, all busy at work! In July, the space around The Hall will be landscaped, and, hopefully, the construction company, Swinerton & Walberg, will be able to hand over the newly completed building to the school sometime around July 20th. The school will then have a busy month to furnish and configure the classrooms, all in time for the start of the 1998-1999 school year. The details of what the school plans to put inside the building, however, has not been disclosed to the students. Because the building's completion date has not been fixed, I do not know when or where the school plans to dedicate the building; however, I am sure that the school will send announcements when the time comes.

Although it may seem that this would be the last of my articles detailing The Hall's renovation, I plan to publish a final article next October regarding the completed building.