Humboldt State University is planning to raze the former Trinity Hospital property, which sits on 14th Street between B and C streets and has been mostly abandoned a dozen or so years.
The Lumberjack reports that HSU determined it would be more expensive to restore the annex, and that doing so was a low priority for the university, which has more than $100 million in deferred maintenance on primary academic buildings. The annex was built in 1944 and used as a hospital until Mad River was built in 1972. It housed classes and offices until the early 2000s, but now is just used for some storage. There’s no set date for demolition.
The annex isn’t on the city of Arcata’s online historical building registry, and Associate Vice President of Facilities Management Traci Ferdolage said in an email the university hasn’t designated the building historic. She added that university properties are treated differently by the city than other commercial buildings, and said the university has been talking with officials for years about what to do with the annex.
The Journal featured photos of the annex in the 2013 photo essay “Ruins.”
This article appears in Getting Compliant.
With students sleeping in professor’s offices, and growing numbers of homeless men, women and children filling our public greenbelts, not one repairable building should be demolished. It should be re-purposed to address a national and local human disaster.
Hundreds of empathetic HSU students and long term Arcata residents would volunteer to immediately refurbish that building at low cost.
It doesn’t fit with the goal of establishing a marijuana institute.
it we be goodnight HSU gives it back to the community to make it in a assistant living or low-income community..why they would give it back, because city does a whole lot to accommodate HSU, their students and their operations…city needs to be able to address issues of housing. it is a win-win.