UH building The University of Hawaii Board of Regents is expected to honor Les Murakami and Gladys K. Brandt this morning by attaching their names to the facilities they helped to build.
renaming up for
vote by regents
The proposal would name
buildings after Les Murakami
and Gladys K. BrandtBy Treena Shapiro
tshapiro@starbulletin.comA committee approved yesterday renaming the UH Baseball Stadium the "Les Murakami Stadium" and calling the Center for Hawaiian Studies "Kamakauokalani -- The Gladys K. Ainoa Brandt Center for Hawaiian Studies."
The full board votes this morning not just to rename the buildings, but to waive a policy that requires a person be deceased for five years before a building can bear his or her name.
The committee also voted in favor of renaming the social sciences building -- formerly Porteus Hall -- "Saunders Hall in honor of Allan and Marion Saunders" and the student services building the "Queen Liliuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies."
The board also will vote today on the university's $700 million capital improvements program, a "zero growth" supplemental budget request, streamlining administrative procedures, raising the salaries of executive employees and conferring honorary degrees on Japanese literature professor Edward G. Seidensticker and world-renowned mime Marcel Marceau.
Regent Billy Bergin, chairman of the committee on budget and long-range planning, lauded UH President Evan Dobelle's plans to request some $550 million for capital improvement projects during the special legislative session next week.
Part of the plan calls for a $300 million health and wellness complex in Kakaako to be funded equally by tobacco settlement funds and private fund raising. The complex would include a new home for the John A. Burns School of Medicine and the Cancer Research Center.
Dobelle said he also will request $150 million from the general fund for a new UH-West Oahu campus in Kapolei.
His program also includes a multipurpose complex at UH-Hilo; an astronomy research center in Kula, Maui; and smaller projects and repair and maintenance at other campuses.
In response to regents' queries on how he would prioritize the projects, Dobelle said it was up to them and state lawmakers.
He said Gov. Ben Cayetano has included the West Oahu campus, the medical school, the Hilo multipurpose complex and deferred maintenance projects in his $1 billion capital improvement package for the Legislature.
Bergin said he also had questioned building new structures before maintaining existing ones, until the plans were explained to him in more detail. "There's a very important thread (connecting all these projects): generation of economic activity," he said.
Eugene Imai, senior vice president for administration, said the university will also submit a 2002-03 supplemental budget request that asks the state to continue the same level of funding next year, including an additional $6 million for infrastructure requirements to match funds given in the first year of the budget.
Ka Leo O Hawaii
University of Hawaii
