Is Dormzilla Dead in the Water?

“How much leverage does anyone have over billionaires? That’s one of the mysteries of our time in history.” That was the question posed by Dick Flacks, retired UCSB sociology professor, affordable housing advocate, and mainstay of the local progressive community for more than 60 years. He was musing on the Faculty Senate’s recent 200-page dissection of the proposed Munger Hall, also known as Dormzilla.

Released two weeks ago, that report concluded that the mega-dorm named after billionaire Charles Munger — who pledged to donate $250 million to its construction so long as he could design it — posed a likely health and safety risk to its inhabitants even in a scaled-down version from what Munger and the university first proposed. For it to be acceptable, the Faculty Senate panel concluded, Munger would have to make the building considerably smaller, contain considerably fewer people, and provide far more exterior windows than the relatively small number currently proposed.

When word first leaked out about what was proposed, the news generated a firestorm of public and professional condemnation by those in the architectural world. At that time, Munger Hall would have stood 11 stories off the ground and contained rooms for 4,500 students, thus solving the campus’s housing obligations in one fell swoop. Since then, Munger and his design team have dropped it to nine stories and 3,500 residents.