Recently, the plan for URI's biotechnology building was the subject of two sequential articles in the Providence Journal. Spending on URI building questioned, July 25, raised concerns by members of the RI House Finance Commitee (HFC), over the presence of administrative space in the plan. URI officials explain biotech center plans, July 26, presented the University's response. What did these exchanges mean, and what do they say about the College of the Environment and Life Sciences (CELS), administrative home to the building, and URI?
What are the issues, and why are they of concern to URI, legislators, and taxpayers? The public discussions covered by the Journal took place at the Rhode Island House Finance Committee. The HFC decides bond requests for statewide referenda, the RI mechanism whereby voters authorize major capital expenditures. HFC also serves as watchdog on architectural plans, project costs, and compliance with what voters approved. HFC bond approvals are based on statements of the need for and nature and scope of each project. A floor plan indicating uses of the biotechnology building was part of the University's presentation to the HFC.
In 2004, voters approved Question 13, to
"...allow the State of Rhode Island to issue general obligation bonds, refunding bonds, and temporary notes in an amount not to exceed $50,000,000 for the construction of the University of Rhode Island Center for Biotechnology and Life Sciences."
The original biotechnology building plans and descriptions, according to the HFC, did not indicate that any of the building was to be used for administration, nor was this use presented to voters. The Voter Handbook, which provided the official explanation of the purpose of the bond money, had only this:
"Explanation: How will the money be spent? $50,000,000 will be used for the construction of the University of Rhode Island Center for Biotechnology and Life Sciences. This teaching and research facility will include modern classrooms, teaching laboratories, high-tech specialty laboratories, centers for state-of-the-art instrumentation, incubator space for technology commercialization, and a 400-seat public auditorium."
After a bond for a $50 million building was approved, detailed architectural drawings were produced. Rumors of two concerns became red flags for the committee: deviation from approved space use and cost overrun, including the appearance of ~10,000 square feet for a top floor administrative suite and a $10 million overrun. In May, 2006, HFC requests for obtain copies of floorplans were stonewalled by CELS and the University until the Committee balked on approving bond referenda for the University. (Eventually, one of three requests by the University, a bond for a pharmacy building, was approved by the HFC for the 2006 referendum. Approvals for bonds for a chemistry building and a nursing building were denied.) The paper reported that the cost of the building was estimated to be $60 million even despite a reduction of ~20,000 square feet; the University indicated it would raise the additional $10 million privately (it was not reported who authorized this or how it would be done).
This issue before the Committee was thus to guarantee that what was presented to the HFC and voters was congruent with what eventually will be built. This is turn is based on the principle that public trust is rooted in government accountability. In a system of checks and balances, oversight would not be given to the parties most directly benefiting from the project (here, the University or its Board of Governors). The Committee was addressing an obvious failure of the oversight system. The Committee also expressed doubts by some members that it might be going too far, meddling in University business ("micro managing"), according to the newspaper, but without external review of this project, the system would have failed the test of proper checks and balances and the public may well have felt betrayed, justifiably, by the "bait and switch" nature of substantive revisions in the floor plans. The newspaper provided insight into a discussion in which all concerns were based on principles that are in the public interest and in point of fact define that interest.
Even after the reported exchanges, unanswered questions remain.
Further Reflections. Aside from the appearance that the College is placing its own administrative wants above public purposes in the new biotechnology building, there are two additional aspects of this project that are troubling. The first relates to the building itself. The second has to do with the trend of buildings symbolized by this one and its predecessor, the Kingston campus Coastal Institute building (there is also a bay campus CI building).
The architect has reportedly designed other biotechnology laboratories, but is there anything in this design to indicate anything extraordinary? The style, externally that of a traditional New England mill building (built to house worker drones) offers little to inspire future faculty or students. This research factory work place is another drab brick box to house faculty and their protégés (following the style exhibited in the adjacent Coastal Institute building). If it is meant to inspire or to invoke an intellectually spiritual sense of pride to the campus, does it do so? I submit that it does not, but I cannot say why this is so. Perhaps it is a matter of economics. What does $50 or $60 million get compared to Brown's $92 million life science building, which opens this fall? Is there such a lack of public spirit and funding that mediocre and uninspiring is the best Rhode Island can do with its public buildings, even on its only research university campus? Or if the money should have been sufficient for a style the state could take pride in, why does this building appear to be so dull?
Are the internal floor plans designed with the best contemporary thinking for biotechnology research? Were they exposed to external review by qualified scientists and other designers? Were faculty beyond the Dean's office part of the design team, and had any of the design team ever designed or worked in leading-edge biotechnology facilities? Just what was the expertise of the design team beyond the architect and the Dean's office; i.e., what particular expertise was sought explicitly for the purpose of building leading edge biotechnology facilities? Qualified external experts who have seen these plans have allegedly reported that "it isn't done this way anymore;" are such criticisms valid?
Should an environmental college at least have an additional design criterion of attention to energy efficiency, displayed in design elements that are as state-of-the-art as modern technology permits? Do the plans demonstrate the College's awareness of the dismal energy future facing the campus and the world? Did this building's designers presume it will outlive the end of the age of oil and natural gas (for most practical purposes, let's say this will occur well within the present century), and does the building indicate that the designers are cognizant of any particular green energy-saving designs or technologies? Certainly, the energy-bleeding top floor suite shown in plans is at the very least environmentally insensitive, at worst blatantly energy wasteful. Is this the best that can be produced by what ought to be the University's "greenest" college, which calls itself a College of the Environment? While the building's predecessor, the Coastal Institute, might be forgiven such shortcomings (one must question the energy efficiency and design life of the metal "wave" basement laboratory section, for example), the CI building at least can be excused for its meager price, less than one-fifth of the biotechnology edifice. Is it the College's claim that biotechnology (and administrative privilege) is all that matters, and nothing else environmental need concern us? This building seems to be saying so.
Is this building a sign that CELS and URI are on the wrong track or are missing something significant? Certainly, CELS has become the environmental college in name only. Was this not the College that voted (under heavy pressure from its administration) to do away with its Department of Community Planning. How was this possible? With little doubt, Community Planning was a department that may well be more important to the State's looming planning crisis (in a world with more problems from post-peak oil and global warming than most of us can imagine) than any other unit of the institution. This is the College administration who produced organizational models for the life sciences that do away with BOTH plant and animal sciences (dissolved in some murky biotechie superorganizational soup). These two departments are critical to maintenance and evolution of the State's aquatic and agricultural resources, currently the principle mechanisms for maintaining open spaces and a quality of life that is important to most Rhode Islanders, and the traditional forms of knowledge of these departments will also be vital in the life of the State for the foreseeable future. Certainly, if citizens want to know how to grow a garden or to run a small farm or aquacultural enterprise, their quest for knowledge will not begin in a biotechnology laboratory.
But just what is it that this building stands for? The building was once the brainchild of 50 faculty biologists seeking core facilities for access to biotechnical tools, with applications in the marine and environmental sciences. The building now symbolizes the State's legacy of last-place support for State University research (more), as URI becomes one of the last state universities to develop such capacities. Yet, in the design process the needs and talents of all but a very few of the faculty have been forgotten, lost in vague political jive promising great prosperity through entrance into the lucrative business of biopharmaceutical and biomedical research. Is the University seriously claiming that it can enter this arena, one that was already crowded a decade ago when the building was first conceived? Does anyone really believe that URI will ever compete with Brown and Brown's new buildings and existing extensive medical facilities, faculty, and staff (and even here, Brown is a late-comer and relative light-weight in biotechnology research)? How will URI do this without a major infusion of millions of dollars of new and permanent state funds, or without converting virtually all faculty retirements in CELS into biotechies? Will the attempt be futile, and can it be done without losing the soul and academic strengths of CELS departments that have been of traditionally greatest value to the State?
The great difficulty in all of this is that no one knows, and no one is saying, what lies in the future for CELS. And if CELS is leading URI down a garden path, no one has yet articulated where that path leads the institution or why we are on it (if we to take the usual platitudes about economic development as a sufficient reason for URI to lurch off into this direction, what other promises of yet-to-be-realized new sources of wealth will steer the flagship institution next)? This is the College that has yet to make good on its administration's talk of basing everything on a vision and mission-driven strategic planning process (a promise made in 2001); indeed, this is a college which operates without a plan and virtually without a system of shared faculty governance, and its faculty must be asking themselves, as the URI community must also ask, where is CELS going and what does CELS stand for? If the institution's lack of academic expertise in planning and architecture is being revealed as a significant weakness by the irresponsible way this public building is being planned, and if this design signifies the ability of administrators to put their own well being above the common good, then the public must ask what else is being revealed? Did CELS and URI handling of HFC concerns cost URI bond positions for chemistry and nursing buildings in 2006, and will public awareness and criticism of the biotechnology building perhaps lead voters to reject the bond for a pharmacy building? All of this should leave the URI community feeling tremendously uneasy.