Stanford Redwood City!!!

The following is an email sent from Randy Livingston, vice president for Business Affairs and Chief Financial Officer, to all Business Affairs staff on March 18, 2019.

Dear Colleagues,

Fourteen years ago, Stanford purchased land in Redwood City with the vision to create an administrative campus while preserving space on the historic main campus for education and research. Two years ago, at the University IT Town Hall, we shared pictures of the Redwood City site that had just been cleared and made ready for construction to begin. Today, March 18, 2019, the first moving crates arrived. On Wednesday, the first 70 employees, including me, will start their workday at the new Stanford Redwood City Campus. I visited the campus today and it is spectacular!

This is truly a historic moment for Stanford. The new campus is essential to Stanford’s continued growth and advancement of our mission of teaching, learning, research, and patient care. The new campus provides an excellent opportunity to create our own workplace culture including news ways of working while continuing to provide seamless and exceptional service to our customers.

Thank you for your contributions, questions, input, and suggestions during the design and construction process. I believe we met our Business Affairs Design Principles. I look forward to hearing your reactions to the new work environment as well.

Many individuals contributed to bringing the Stanford Redwood City Campus to life, including our colleagues from LBRE and University HR. Within Business Affairs, I want to recognize three individuals: Noel Hirst has led the planning, interior design and change management for Redwood City since it was first envisioned 14 years ago! She has overseen Business Affairs Principal Initiatives related to Redwood City for each of the past 5 years. Matthew Ricks and Denise Ochoa have been co-leaders of the effort, with Matthew focused on all of the IT infrastructure and Denise serving as move captain.

I also want to acknowledge all of you for your patience and flexibility as we worked through the myriad of details that are necessary to build and open a new campus. I ask for your continued patience and grace as we work through the first few months of bringing the campus on-line. Everyone has the best interests of Stanford and our employees in mind as they complete construction and begin operating each building and program. I encourage you to continue to be open to new ideas and show tolerance, while continuing to provide feedback and ideas while we are still in a transition and learning phase.

Be sure you take time to enjoy the amenities. Take the opportunity to get to know your colleagues by moving between areas and floors. The openness of the campus and the central plazas in each building are one of the ways we hope to foster new ways of working and more collaboration with our colleagues.

As with the completion of any project, there are a few open items you may encounter as you arrive at Stanford Redwood City. Noel provided the following items to share with you:

1. Open stair printed graphics. For B4, the installation requires the temporary removal of the glass guardrail of the stair to allow the graphic to be put in place. This work could not start until after final inspections were completed, which occurred on March 8th. The overall process will take 2-3 weeks from top to bottom of the stair. Given this timing and duration and all the flurry of activity required to open the first building, the project team made the decision to start the graphics beginning in B3 and progressing to B1 and then we will revert back to B4 so as to minimize the disruption to one building versus all four buildings. Thank you for your understanding.
2. Executive Meeting Rooms table top data outlet (Byrne Box). The HDMI cable from the floor box is missing a terminus (Byrne box) that is on order and will be installed upon arrival, this will clean up the installation so as to match all the other small rooms
3. Card Readers in the Elevators are in process
4. Planters – Plants and irrigation are in process
5. Floor Level Directories for the Elevator lobbies and other Wayfinding signage is in progress
6. Heating and Cooling system and Lighting Control systems are being activated floor by floor prior to move in
7. Art work for the public spaces LBRE is working with a consultant to bring an exciting curated art program to Stanford Redwood City. What this means to us is that we will have specially selected pieces of art in common areas. The SRWC executive committee is forming a team to work with the consultant to determine the themes and types of art pieces for the campus and will have more information later in the spring and summer as we settle into SRWC. Until then, we do ask that you refrain from hanging any art of your own on the common areas walls. Please contact Denise Ochoa if you have specific questions or need to hang something in one of the Executive Meeting Rooms

Thank you again, and for those of you moving, enjoy your new campus!

Regards, Randy