TelCom moving to off-campus quarters

by Sarah R. Buchholz, Chronicle staff

fter 13 years of working in four separate buildings, three of which were "temporary" quarters, 45 Telecommunication Services staff are headed for a new space where they all can work together. The move is scheduled to begin Oct. 23.

     Located on 101 University Drive next to the Post Office, the staff's new environment will be a nearly 7,700 square-foot second-floor space that Art professor Sigrid Miller Pollin decorated in muted greens and browns and yellows to reflect the trees it looks into. Among the amenities in the new space that were lacking in the three TelCom trailers, are a storage room, a break room, and bathrooms.

     "We've been living in trailers for 13 years with no bathrooms," said Randy Sailer, Telecom director. "We're not talking palatial; we're just talking space with a bathroom. Right now we have to cross the street to talk with people who we [work] with daily. We have a conference room piled high with stuff because we have no storage."

     Sailer said that after consulting with Space Management and Facilities Planning staff, he and they agreed that there was no appropriate contiguous space for the group on campus that would be available "anytime soon" and they began to consider off-campus sites.

     "We were willing to take our time and make sure that we did it right," he said of the two-year process that included space planning and design, lease negotiations, bidding and building.

     "We've budgeted for it," he said. "We built it into our budget, and it's a relatively small [part] of it. We've just been careful about filling positions and keeping our expenses in line, reducing our expenses over time. And we've lowered the rates to the campus over the last couple of years, [too]."

     Sailer said he is grateful for help from a number of offices on campus. Facilities Planning helped with negotiations and design, Parking Services is working to find a way to prevent staff from losing precious seniority in the parking system, and, because the new location abuts the Post Office, where Mail Services makes regular runs, that office agreed to continue to deliver mail to TelCom as if it is still on campus.

     "So our address is the same, and we're TelCom, so all our phone numbers are staying the same. People can reach us the way they always have."

     The move will take several days, Sailer said.

     "We're going to move in stages and make sure we always have somebody answering the phone and fixing problems and dealing with our normal course of work," he said. "The first group will start moving on Wednesday the 23rd, and most of the rest of the stuff, we'll move on Friday the 25th. The last folks to move will be the telephone operators who will come sometime during the next week."

     TelCom publications coordinator Jason Vosu said that University operators will have an enclosed room to minimize noise and will have an internal bathroom to ensure the safety of those who work outside of normal business hours. Vosu said there also will be a LAN room for equipment, a large conference room and two small conference rooms. Aside from the operators, all employees will be working in one large room, partitioned into cubicles, Sailer said. Because none of the cubicle walls reach the ceiling, the small conference rooms will be available for private meetings or as a quiet place to work.

     "I've been on campus for 20 years, Sailer said. "We've never had anything like this before."

     The group has a five-year lease with the option to renew for five more years.
"Obviously we'd like to be back on campus and this would be our ultimate goal," he said. "We'll be working with Campus Facilities to see if there's a reasonable spot for us back on campus."

     In the meantime, staff will have to content themselves with pictures of the campus that Photographic Services helped TelCom select for the walls in the new space.

     "We're picking out a whole bunch of images that we can blow up to help us keep connected to the campus. We're only a quarter of a mile away; we should feel part of the campus."