By Jess Carey
These days, the whirrs and booms of machinery have become a familiar presence on campus. Walking up B St. comes with the added challenge of dodging beeping trucks and equipment; bangs and clangs echo clear up to the Redwood Bowl. Construction noise is a constant reminder of changing times as the state’s $433 million investment in campus infrastructure is being converted into concrete and steel. While a giant crane looms over the new science building, visible from most of Arcata, another project has been breaking ground around the corner on 14th and B St. Four buildings of the former Children’s Center have been demolished — the Mary Warren House, Walter Warren House, Baiocchi House and the Toddler Center.
As the administration demolishes a historic structure on campus, questions are raised about what the big H chose to build instead. The site is grounds for a new building, dubbed the Energy Research and Sustainability Center (ERSC). The planned 20,000 square-foot two-story building has a budget of $28 million, and is slated to be the epicenter of sustainability and energy programs on campus. The project is funded by one-time Cal Poly funds that were designated for facilities improvements in 2022.
The site has been abandoned since the Children’s Center moved to the renovated Trinity Annex in 2023. The buildings were former residential homes that the university reused, examples of what Mike Fischer, Associate Vice President of Facilities Management, calls the campus’s legacy homes. These older buildings on campus were acquired from donations or purchased from the surrounding community as the campus grew over time. While originally built as residences, they are now used primarily as offices and community spaces.
“While [legacy homes] are quaint and a vision of the past, they are old, expensive and inefficient,” Fischer said. “When it comes to better land utilization and increasing density to serve our population, these are some of the buildings we’d like to remove.”
Fischer cited constant maintenance needs, including “leaky pipes and windows,” as a recurring problem. He says that the new ERSC will consolidate existing sustainability programs that are currently scattered around the campus, like the energy systems engineering program and the Office of Sustainability.
“This project will give sustainability programs visibility, and a place to manifest a real place to live,” Fischer said.
The Schatz Energy Research Center, which already has a building of its own on campus, is expected to have a footprint in the ERSC. The non-profit agency is partnering with Cal Poly Humboldt on this project. The building will contain labs and equipment for energy research including the development of a campus microgrid solar energy system.
Fischer also noted that the entry to campus is a little lost on the south side, as the buildings looked like part of the resident community. Walkability is awkward, as the lack of pedestrian connection between Union and B Streets causes foot traffic to frequently cut across the G14 and G15 parking lots. The ERSC will establish a “southern place” on the campus border and improve walkability by building new sidewalks and pedestrian routes.
With the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology and the community gardens being just up the hill, the ERSC will complete the sustainability theme of the south campus.
“That quadrant of campus is really gearing up to be our sustainability and land stewardship center, becoming something really unique,” Fischer said.
While the sustainability of leaving buildings empty for years only to demolish them raises some ethical questions, the university has recently renovated several historic buildings. The Trinity Annex project, completed in 2023, preserved the aesthetic of a unique old-growth redwood building and converted it from decrepit campus storage into a fully functional childcare and educational center. The ongoing restoration of the former technology building will preserve its architectural style while transforming it into a new state-of-the-art sculpture lab.
It is important to remember where we come from, and nods to the past can still be seen in the remaining legacy homes scattered throughout campus. However, it is clear that as the university settles into its Cal Poly future, not every treasured, quirky building is going to stick around.
Jess Carey is a senior at Cal Poly Humboldt, majoring in biology and double minoring in botany and journalism, and the science editor for The Lumberjack. They are passionate about telling stories that are relevant to the community, branching their interests in science, music, and storytelling.
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