Skip to content

Selection of 2020 Developer

June 15, 2016

Dear campus community,

After months of eager anticipation and a lot of intense effort by many of you during a very challenging evaluation process, I take great pleasure this morning in announcing the winning proposal and sharing some striking artistic renderings for the next major phase of campus construction, known as the 2020 Project.

Plenary Properties Merced (PPM) has been selected from a group of three highly qualified development teams to direct this project, subject to approval by the UC Board of Regents next month. The new construction will nearly double our physical capacity over the next four years, providing much-needed research, teaching, residential, student-life and recreational facilities and allowing us to increase enrollment to 10,000 students by the 2021-22 academic year.

PPM emerged from a rigorous, two-year competition as the development team best able to design, build, operate and maintain a wide range of facilities rapidly and cost-effectively while meeting our stringent requirements for functionality, sustainability, aesthetics and flexibility. Their proposal integrates beautifully with our existing campus and creates the kind of mixed-use, living/learning environment we strongly favor ­ one that will enable student, faculty and staff interaction, and reinforce our commitment to interdisciplinary research and learning.  It was the hands down favorite of almost every person involved in evaluating competing proposals.

Please take a moment to view this brief video, which provides a wonderful visual depiction of what the proposed expansion will look like within four years. I hope you find it as intriguing and exciting as I did!

SEE VIDEO HERE

This is an enormously important milestone for UC Merced in our quest to become the next great American research university ­ the first to blend the University of California¹s rich tradition of excellence with a progressive, 21st century character.

I want to thank everyone for your patience and understanding as we¹ve worked diligently to get to this point. In particular, I want to thank and recognize the entire 2020 Project team and the faculty and staff members, and student volunteers, who helped evaluate and score the project proposals.

I think we have a winner!

Sincerely,

Dorothy Leland

Chancellor

Announcements