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Webcam offers birds-eye view of Eshleman demolition

By Public Affairs

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Jackhammers are poised to roar into action Thursday to bring down UC Berkeley’s Eshleman Hall, a milestone in the rebuilding of Lower Sproul Plaza.

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View of Eshleman Hall from a webcam atop Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley.

Demolition won’t have the drama of dynamite. But anyone interested in watching the seven-story earthquake-challenged building being leveled can have a front row seat at on the Lower Sproul project website , where a webcam is tracking the action.

A time-lapse webcast shows the gradual dismantling of Eshleman over the past few months, reducing the building to a shell. You can also use an interactive calendar to see what was happening on any date over the last few months.

Work on the new Lower Sproul has been going on since Eshleman Hall closed in January. The stairway between Lower Sproul Plaza and Alumni House is now being demolished and the area is closed for the summer.  There will be no pedestrian or vehicle access from Spieker Plaza to Lower Sproul plaza during summer 2013. The stairway to Lower Sproul Plaza near Bancroft and Telegraph is now closed until fall 2015.  Lower Sproul plaza is accessible only via the staircase near Ludwig’s Fountain and the breezeway on the east side of the Cesar Chavez Student Center.

Demolition work, scheduled to continue through mid-June, is expected to be very noisy.

A drawing showing summer 2013 access is posted on the Capital Projects website .

The project website also offers artists’ renderings of what the new Lower Sproul will look like, including the new Eshleman, and details on the full scope of the work. The Lower Sproul Plaza work is expected to be completed in fall 2015.