Fire safety concerns threaten the April opening of new SUB.
After a fire, health and safety consultation last Monday, the AMS was informed that the new SUB might need to have sprinklers installed in areas where there currently are none. According to VP Admin Ava Nasiri, there was a discrepancy between the plans that had previously been laid out for fire sprinklers and the consultant's interpretation of the fire code during a recent walkthrough of the building.
The impact this might have on the new SUB is uncertain. Nasiri mentioned that the consultants were still deciding whether the sprinklers are necessary and that the AMS doesn’t know if they have come to a conclusion yet.
“They are still sitting down and interpreting that code, so we are not 100 percent sure what is going on right now,” said Nasiri.
The ambiguity is guaranteed to be unnerving for anyone hoping that the new SUB will open soon. Up until now, the AMS has been optimistic about a tentative opening in early April.
Nasiri echoed this optimism but was sincere about the possibility of a later opening.
“I don’t want to say it’s not opening in April because it very well could, and I don’t want to say it’s opening in April because it very well could not if [the consultants] come back and say that they have decided to reinterpret the fire code and then ask us to install sprinklers in areas where we will have to rip out the ceiling,” said Nasiri.
Instead, Nasiri has been pushing what she calls a “zero-based scheduling tactic,” in which the AMS will wait until the new SUB gets occupancy before announcing an official opening date five days from that point.
When pressed about releasing an exact opening for the new SUB Nasiri’s response was honest and calculated.
“If I had one life would be so great -- at this point we’re in a place where we don’t want to invest in a date that is very, very variable," she said.