Demolition of University of Iowa’s Oakdale Hall starts

CORALVILLE – At 8:15 a.m. Friday, a wrecking ball came down on a piece of Iowa’s history.

The University of Iowa began the demolition of Oakdale Hall Friday. Built in 1917, it was originally used as a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients.

The UI it took it over in 1965, although tuberculosis patients were there until 1981. Since 1971 the 220,000-square-foot building at the UI Research Park has been known as the home of the State Hygienic Laboratory.

The lab moved last fall into a new state-of-the-art facility nearby. While lab employees are happy with their new home, there was some sadness among the couple of dozen people who watched the demolition.

“Bittersweet, is what I tell people,” said Kathy Fait, the lab’s librarian and historian.

The demolition started on the northwest side of the building, with the wrecking ball taking out chunks of brick. The work will take a few weeks to finish at an estimated cost of $3.95 million.

Razing the building will eliminate $800,000 in annual operating expenses and about $40 million in deferred maintenance, which is about 20 percent the total for the entire campus, said Dan Heater, director of building and landscape services.

Replacing the building would cost about $120 million, he said, whereas the new Hygienic Lab cost $37.7 million and is nearly half the size.

“It really was an easy decision to put our resources into a new facility,” Heater said.

The other programs that were housed in Oakdale Hall moved to other buildings on the Research Campus, he said.

A wrecking ball creates a hole in the roof of Oakdale Hall, Friday March 11, 2011, at the University of Iowa Research Park in Coralville. The 220,000 square foot building, built in 1917, was slated for demolition by the State Board of Regents in March of 2010 due to the high cost of maintaining the facility. (Becky Malewitz/SourceMedia Group News)