Demolition of UI’s Oakdale Hall to start soon

Demolition of a 94-year-old University of Iowa building that originally housed a tuberculosis sanitarium will begin in a few weeks, UI officials said.

Oakdale Hall, on the UI's Oakdale Research Campus in Coralville, is slated to come down beginning in late January or early February, officials said.

Demolition of the 220,000 square-foot building will take about one month, Wendy Moorehead, communications manager with UI Facilities Management, said. Clean-up and landscaping of the site, at 2351 Old Hospital Road on the research campus, will happen in the spring, she said.

Total cost of the Oakdale Hall demolition is about $3.95 million, the project budget approved by state regents last spring. UI officials said renovating the building would be too costly due to its age and condition. Demolishing the facility will result in annual savings of about $2 million in operations, maintenance and energy costs, UI officials said.

Oakdale Hall has about $39.6 million in ongoing deferred maintenance needs, UI officials reported to the regents.

The primary tenant of Oakdale Hall had been the State  Hygienic Laboratory at the UI, which recently moved into a new state-of-the-art facility nearby. Now the only UI function in Oakdale Hall is the air quality weight lab, Moorehead said, and only a few people are in the building for that.

Oakdale Hall was built in 1917 as a sanatorium hospital. In 1965, the Oakdale campus and its facilities became part of the University of Iowa.