This month, two major projects were completed at UCSF Parnassus: the event center at Millberry Union reopened after three months of renovation, and fast-casual eatery Ladle & Leaf opened a new location inside the School of Nursing.
From June until September 7th, crews upgraded the audio/visual capabilities at Millberry Union Event & Meeting Center, which shares a building with UCSF's food court at 500 Parnassus Ave. Workers also replaced several windows that offer sweeping downtown views and installed new sound-proofing materials.
Rooms in the event center are only available to UCSF-registered student organizations; the facility consists of a 2,240 square-foot large conference center, the 1,120 square-foot Golden Gate Room, and two smaller spaces that can be rented singly or combined to create 1,120 square feet. These rooms can be configured for classrooms, lectures or receptions.
Next week, a new university store will open inside Millberry Union, offering UCSF-branded gear, school supplies and more. According to Kristen Bole, Assistant Director of Public Affairs at UCSF, students will no longer need to shop in "a tiny section" of Walgreen's to find "UCSF wear, electronic gadgets and other conveniences."
According to UCSF, the Parnassus campus has an average daily population of 16,000 people. Originally built as student housing, Guy S. Millberry Union was built in 1958 and encompasses more than 410,000 square feet. As part of UCSF's Long Range Development Plan for the site, parts of the building may eventually revert to housing, but not until 2035. In the interim, "we hope to make some additional improvements to Millberry Union, since it's quite architecturally challenged," Bole told us via email.
The next major construction project at UCSF with a community impact is renovating the Clinical Sciences Building on Parnassus, one of the campus' oldest buildings. Crews are currently transforming the building in a $95 million effort that will eventually create "a hybrid Activity-Based Work Place model," according to the project's description. If the project keeps its schedule, work will be completed in 2017.
Across the street, at UCSF's School of Nursing, Ladle & Leaf (formerly San Francisco Soup Co.) has opened a new location after several construction delays where "everything that could go wrong, did go wrong," according to UCSF's Campus Life Services. The soup-and-salad vendor replaces Courtyard Cafe, which held down the spot for 28 years. As we've previously noted, the Millberry Union food court and other eateries on UCSF's Parnassus campus are open to the public, offering sweeping views to those in the know.
