‘Life safety concerns’: FAU to quietly open Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute after 4-month closure
After a four-month closure caused by a building malfunction, the $35 million FAU Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute on FAU’s Jupiter campus will reopen Monday for classes.
“While work will be ongoing on various aspects of building operations, I am pleased to report that the life safety concerns within the building have been permanently resolved,” an FAU internal email reads.
But, the building will not be fully open.
The building has not been cleared for research or lab animals, which could take up to eight and a half months, Wendy Ash Graves, the director of the FAU Office of Environmental Health and Safety, said in her email.
Graves’ email did not explain why the building repairs could take up to eight and a half months. The UP could not reach university officials for comment by the time of publication.
In August, the UP obtained an email via public records that FAU officials wouldn’t explain further.
“Our current state is to relocate occupants (by 7/30/23) and then animals (ASAP) because the building pressurization is unstable and any condition which knocks the HVAC off line (fire alarm, power fluctuation, or otherwise) causes the potential for entrapment,” Ash Graves wrote in an internal email on Saturday, July 29.
The pressure inside the building became so strong that people would get trapped in rooms because they couldn’t open the doors, someone who works in the building told the UP in August. The person declined to be identified out of fear for their job.
Jessica Abramsky is the Editor-in-Chief of the University Press. For more information on this article or others, you can reach Jessica at journalistjess22@gmail.com or tweet her @jessabramsky.
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