Administration building becomes wheelchair accessible

The installation of an elevator in the Administration building this month will add safe passage to a building that has been wheelchair inaccessible since its initial construction.

Before the installation, the only way to access any upper levels of the building was to climb two sets of stairs. People in wheelchairs had no access to the upper two floors, which included the provost's office and the president's office.

"Originally there wasn't any way for people in wheelchairs to get literally from the ground floor to this first level," junior elementary education major Kathryn Snedeker, who worked in the Administration building last semester, said.

In the past, Snedeker has been questioned by visitors about the building's wheelchair accessibility and could only say it was not available. Snedeker said she felt it reflected poorly on the school.

For the past several years, the President's Commission on Disability Issues named the lack of wheelchair accessibility in the building as a top priority and made it their main priority in 2002, according to Marian Dombroski, lead architect in the Department of Facilities Management and member of the President's Commission on Disability Issues.

"[The elevator] was a big issue," Dombroski said. "It was very disturbing and frustrating to everybody at Facilities Management that it took so long to put everything together," said Dombroski.

Funding for the project came from various sources: "Access UM," which is a campus program  set up to address campus accessibility projects, and "Access Maryland" a program in the Maryland Department of Disabilities and Facilities Council, which advises the administration on facilities issues. 

Since 2003, the Commission, with agreement from President Mote and Facilities Management, has funneled at least half of the "Access UM" funds towards the elevator project, said Carlo Colella, Director of Capital Projects in Facilities Management.

The project from design to completion took almost two years and cost around $1.8 million.

One of the existing staircases was removed to build an elevator shaft and install the elevator. To save cost, the contractors recycled building materials from the old staircase, such as the railings and the marble floors, and used it in the elevator.

The Administration building's designation as a historic building was another reason that university officials were reluctant to put in an elevator in the past. Until now it wasn't "feasible" to install an elevator without causing major external change to the building, said Colella.

Until five to ten years ago, the technology, called a Machine Room-less elevator, which installs an elevator into an existing building without making major cosmetic exterior changes, did not exist,  said Director of Operations and Maintenance John Baker.

The elevator has passed all inspections and is now ready to be used. The only thing left is cosmetic work, which Colella said will be finished in mid-September.

desmarattes at umdbk dot com