Campus Life Project
Project Overview
Pepperdine University is pleased to unveil its Campus Life Project. This multi-year plan will provide necessary refurbishments to our thirty-seven year old facilities while enhancing the University's ability to provide a quality campus experience to students, faculty, alumni, and visitors.
The Campus Life Project will modernize important areas to meet the evolving needs of the University. Today's college student is dramatically different than the college student of five years ago, let alone thirty-seven. Our facilities must provide for this new student with appropriate amenities to support a high-caliber college education. For example, the undergraduate student housing rehabilitation will add student beds to allow a larger percentage of the current student population to reside on campus, thereby improving the University's ability to educate the "whole" student. This will also reduce the number of student commuters and improve peak-hour traffic in the local area. The Campus Life Project is about quality rather than quantity and does not propose any increase in student enrollment.
The creation of more open space will foster a greater sense of community. In the heart of the academic core, the Seaver Town Square will provide two levels of underground parking beneath a landscaped central quad. This will provide a community center for the campus and add much-needed, centralized green space for informal recreation, community gatherings, and outdoor classes. This will also serve as Seaver College's Welcome Center creating an official "gateway" to the college as well as providing information to visitors.
Pepperdine strives to offer state-of-the-art athletic and recreation facilities to the university community. The Firestone Fieldhouse, which was the "jewel of the West Coast Conference" upon its construction in 1973, is outdated and one of the conference's least preferred venues. An Athletics/Events Center, located away from our neighboring residents in the campus' northern interior, is proposed to realign Pepperdine with other NCAA Division I schools in the conference. Once the center is complete, all spectator seating will be removed from the Firestone Fieldhouse, which will be renovated into a student recreation center.
The University also proposes to upgrade its soccer field to a NCAA-compliant field. In addition, the existing intramural field will be improved to provide a grass recreation area.
Pepperdine has incorporated sustainable building elements into our facilities since the mid-1980s with a specific emphasis on energy efficiency and lifecycle cost. The Campus Life Project maintains this commitment and will feature enhanced sustainable elements whenever feasible. For example, the University is committed to incorporating native vegetation into landscaping including drought-resistant trees and plants recommended by the California Native Plants Society to reduce water consumption and fire risk. Currently, Pepperdine maintains over 500 acres of open space on the Malibu campus and uses reclaimed water for irrigation.
Pepperdine University welcomes open dialogue with all members of the community as we seek to undertake much-needed upgrades to our Malibu campus. If you have comments or would like additional information, please contact Alisa Karlan at (323) 466-3445 or Alisa.Karlan@pepperdine.edu. We will continuously update this site as more information becomes available. Thank you for your interest in the Campus Life Project.
