Room 485 of the UW-Milwaukee chemistry building shows its age and wear, like most of the building, with chipped wood on the edges of the lab tables and water damage at the base where they meet the concrete floor.
On March 14, 2019, a news conference was held in this particularly beat-up organic chemistry lab on the fourth floor.
Former UW System President Ray Cross, as well as education officials and Milwaukee business leaders, wanted to urge state officials to approve a project to build a new chemistry building.
“[Cross] wanted to have a news conference in the chemistry building, …which I thought was clever,” said Joe Aldstadt, the head of the chemistry department at UWM. “They wanted to influence the legislators, so that’s where they brought up lots of points about how the building requires all these maintenance visits, we have ventilation issues, we have code problems, the list goes on.”
The chemistry building had reached the end of its useful life, Ray Cross said in the news conference.
Six days later, the Wisconsin State Building Commission approved a new chemistry building for UWM–one of the final steps to ensure a new building would replace the 50-year-old building that currently stands.
UWM began construction on the $118 million state-of-the-art building in December, and held a groundbreaking ceremony on January 26, marking the end of an uphill battle.
Planning for a new chemistry building began around 12 years ago, but it has consistently ranked in the middle and only recently became a top priority, according to Aldstadt who has been at UWM since 1998. The arguments needed to change.
There was a problem of competing agendas. For the chemistry department, a new building would be a better teaching and learning environment, but for the state officials who approve these types of projects, a new building would make financial sense and foster employment in Wisconsin.
“Saying ‘I can do my research so much better if I have this type of laboratory compared to what I have now,’ that’s important to me, but not as important to people in Madison,” Aldstadt said. “Why we really want to do this is because we want a state-of-the-art facility, not that our current facility is falling apart, it’s just taking a lot of time and money to keep things going–to keep them safe and functional.”
State Officials: Building Code and Economic Growth
Most of the funding for large facility projects on the UWM campus comes from the state’s capital budget and is a decision that involves the university, board of regents, state legislators and the governor. The Student Union renovation, Klotsche Center addition, and new chemistry building are all part of the 2019-21 capital budget.
A building condition analysis found it financially infeasible to renovate the current eight-story chemistry building as a majority of its infrastructure is original and the building is not up to current code, according to a 2020 document from the State Building Commission, part of the Department of Administration (DOA).
The analysis calls out three places the building does not meet code.
- Fire safety: (Option 1) “[The building] does not have a fire suppression system, nor proper fire compartmentalization control areas, such as pressurized stairwell towers and entry/egress vestibules,” the document says. (Option 2) The building does not have a fire suppression system, which is any system used to extinguish fire using water, foam or chemical compounds. Likewise, it does not have proper fire compartmentalization areas, like pressurized stairwell towers and entry/egress vestibules, which use fire resisting materials to prevent further spread of fire and smoke.
- Live load: “The building’s structural system is designed to only support half of a live load of the current building code requirements for this type of space.” Live load refers to the weight added to a structure by people or movable objects.
- Chemical and equipment storage: “The quantity of chemicals stored in the facility has expanded beyond current safe storage capacities and safe chemical storage is both a building code, and accreditation requirement.” The document also says that some lab instruments and equipment are being stored in instructional labs, as opposed to in special locations, which hinders data collection and causes premature failure.
The new chemistry building will fix these code issues. The 2019-21 Capital Budget, the largest in state history, is focusing on upgrading facilities with these types of code violations, a DOA document says.
This is normal and accepted for buildings that age, according to Rick Koehler, who supervises construction and maintenance for Facility Services.
“…we use the term ‘grandfathered’ to describe meeting code when constructed but not meeting current code,” Koehler said. “This is acceptable. It would be unreasonable to expect all building owners to change and meet all codes when the codes change, it would be never-ending.”
It justifies building a new building, he added.
Along with talking about the building condition, the 2019 news conference also highlighted the economic significance of the project.
“They had a representative from the Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce and he said something like ‘building a new chemistry building is the most important thing we can do to help job growth in southeastern Wisconsin’ and, again, bam! targeting the legislators,” Aldstadt said.
According to 2021 stats from the American Chemistry Council, chemistry generates almost $1.2 billion in wages in Wisconsin and $138 million in state tax revenue.
At the groundbreaking, speeches from Chancellor Mark Mone, Dean Scott Gronert, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and former UW System President Tommy Thompson all talked about the economic development the new facility would bring.
“This is not only huge for the university, but it’s huge for Milwaukee County and this whole region,” Crowley said. “Chemistry is extremely important when we think about all the fast-growing industries we’re seeing in this community and across this country.”
Aldstadt said that the code and business considerations are sound reasons to replace the building, but he wouldn’t order them that way. Instead, he’d focus on the positive aspects of the new building, rather than the negative aspects of the old one.
“At the time, given all the political dimensions, those were usually highlighted because we knew that people, particularly in Madison, would pick up their ears if they heard arguments like that, as opposed to arguments about what type of lab space would be best,” Aldstadt said.
UWM Chemistry Department: Teaching and Learning Environment
At the groundbreaking ceremony, UW System President Tommy Thompson called the existing building “the worst science building in the system” and “the worst chemistry building in the state.” This worried the chemistry department.
After years of persuading the system and state government while teaching in the aging facility, the chemistry department saw the groundbreaking as a time they wouldn’t need to justify the project, Aldstadt explained.
“Our concern was what if you’re a high school senior and you’re thinking of majoring in chemistry at UWM and you hear that you’re gonna think ‘oh I’m not going there. It’ll be two years before I get from this ‘worst building’,” Aldstadt said. “While true, it implies that it is substandard; it’s not. The university spends a lot of money here to maintain it.”
In 2021, the chemistry building had 572 work orders, costing almost $107,000, according to a report from UWM Facility Services. This maintenance was both reactive and preventative, Koehler said.
“It’s not that [the building] is unsafe, it’s about all the time and money that went into keeping it, sometimes at a bare minimum, but keeping it within the safe operating zone,” Aldstadt said.
Aldstadt said that the building is not the state-of-the-art facility that it was when it was built in the 1970s. Teaching, particularly teaching chemistry, has changed.
“We can do everything we need to do in this building, but a lot has been learned since [1972] about designing classrooms and laboratories,” Aldstadt said. “We’re really really excited about that and that’s an understatement.”
The chemistry department has had to adjust some experiments to accommodate inefficient fume hoods, a DOA document says. Aldstadt said there were only a few cases of this and the experiments were replaced with ones that accomplish the same learning objective.
Fume hoods prevent the release of hazardous substances by containing and then exhausting hazardous or odorous chemicals. The current chemistry building has more than 230 fume hoods of different sizes, according to Aldstadt.
Koehler and the chemistry department emphasized that the experimental nature of chemistry makes it hard on a building, causing it to deteriorate quicker than other buildings.
“I think about my son when he was a toddler and how he was with his toys,” Aldstadt said. “English and other non-experimental subjects, they’re pretty easy on a building. Chemistry is probably the worst.”
Across the UW system, many chemistry and science buildings were built in the same era: UW-Eau Claire, Platteville, Oshkosh and La Crosse in the 1960s and UWM in 1972, according to each university’s website.
UW-Stevens point opened a new chemistry building in 2018, UW-Madison opened a new wing in 2022 and UW-Eau Claire began construction on a new science building in 2022.
The new four-story building will be completed in late 2023 and will be outfitted for modern teaching and research, according to UWM Campus Planning.
Plans to demolish the existing chemistry building and covert the area to usable green space have not been approved, state documents show.