Dingy hallways and classrooms. Stained walls and floors. Tattered furniture. Broken window air-conditioning units. Faulty refrigeration equipment.

Not the ideal setting for science research and teaching, but that’s how University of Hawaii officials described aging Snyder Hall, which houses UH-Manoa’s Microbiology Department, in a recent memo seeking approval to replace the 53-year-old building with a new facility elsewhere on campus.

Despite ostensibly being near the top of UH’s capital improvements priority list for a decade, officials acknowledge the building, one of the oldest on the 103-year-old campus, hasn’t had any meaningful upgrades since it was built. One regent said the building’s been in a “sordid state” for years.

“Built in 1962, Snyder Hall has not undergone any significant rehabilitation or upgrade in the past 53 years. This has resulted in an important science research, classroom, and office facility that is in a severe state of disrepair and in dire need of modernization,” Stephen Meder, Manoa’s assistant vice chancellor for planning and facilities, wrote in a memo to the Board of Regents seeking approval of a $50 million design-build contract for the project.

The disrepair was on display during a recent visit to the five-story building: peeling floor and wall tiles; ceilings and walls with significant water damage; feathers and debris piling on window sills; termite-damaged desks; pooling water from leaky window air-conditioning units; corroding vents; mold growing on jalousie window louvers.

“From a microbiology standpoint it’s not very functional at all,” said associate professor Stuart Donachie, chairman of the Microbiology Department. “Flooding is a routine problem and destroys expensive equipment. Everywhere you look there’s water damage.”

The flooding is so pervasive, he said, one employee on the ground floor covers her desk with a plastic sheet every Friday before leaving for the weekend.

“You can paint, sweep, clean … but the fundamental structure of the building is failing,” Donachie said. “It’s just too old.”

After repeated failed attempts to secure renovation funds from the Legislature, the university will use existing capital improvement funds to replace the building. The Board of Regents at its Aug. 20 meeting approved using $50 million in state-backed bond financing for the project, which is expected to be put out for bid in January.

The funds will pay for a new building that will be four to six stories, with approximately 60,000 square feet of research laboratories and faculty offices. An open parcel on the northern edge of campus, behind the Biomedical Sciences building, has been identified as a potential site. Once the new building is completed, around mid-2018, a second phase will involve renovating the existing 61,000-square-foot Snyder Hall for general classroom use.

“Relocating energy intensive research laboratory functions into a modern, properly designed Snyder replacement and renovating existing Snyder into enhanced learning classrooms allows each of these facilities to operate more efficiently, which further supports and advances both the teaching and research missions of the campus,” Meder said.

UH President David Lassner said the university hopes the project can serve as a model for completing construction projects on time and on budget. The design-build method involves hiring a single contractor to provide design and construction services for a set amount upfront.

“This will be a design- build because we think that will enable us to complete projects more quickly,” Lassner said at a regents meeting earlier this month. “That said, we haven’t done one for a very long time at the university, and certainly the people who are here now haven’t done them.” The last design-build project was the Stan Sheriff Center, which opened in 1994.

Regent Benjamin Kudo, chairman of the board’s Planning and Facilities Committee, said the board expects to see improved accountability with this project.

“We have had a history of projects that have not come in on time, some of which have been not only months late, but years late and also way over budget,” Kudo said. Recent examples include construction of the new UH-West Oahu campus and a UH-Hilo dormitory.

Kudo’s committee about a year ago had the board’s Independent Audit Committee study past “nightmare projects” to find out the causes for the overruns. He said a common problem was with awarding contracts to the lowest bidder.

“What happens is that a lot of times contractors will bid low, and then they’ll kill you with the change orders as the project is being developed,” Kudo said. “But it’s exacerbated by the fact that we did not have final plans completed at the time the green light was given to proceed. So as these plans are being developed, additional costs were being added as it was under construction. … We decided we needed to change our approach so that we would be more more fiscally responsible to meeting our budgets and time frames.”

The Snyder project was approved despite a board-imposed moratorium on new construction projects. The ban was implemented in late 2013 in an effort to redirect resources toward a repair and maintenance backlog that has swelled to nearly a half-billion dollars.

“Although the moratorium prevents new construction or new buildings, this particular project is going to facilitate us doing the repair and maintenance, and therefore is consistent with the spirit and intent of the moratorium, which is to attack our (repair and maintenance backlog),” Kudo said.

UH estimates the university will shave more than $18 million worth of repairs off the list after renovating Snyder Hall.

Some faculty members criticized the planning process for not involving faculty.

“Boy, it sure would’ve been nice to be consulted,” associate biology professor Margeurite Butler told the regents. “We are responsible for about 1,400 life science majors on campus — that is actually one-tenth of the UH-Manoa undergraduate population. We are responsible for the future of these students. So in order to have programmatic success, we need to be involved in the planning.”

Butler agreed that Snyder Hall should be replaced but questioned why the replacement building will be at the northern tip of campus. Currently the Biology Department operates out of Edmonson Hall, which is adjacent to Snyder.

“We support a new building. We need a new building. The current building should be condemned,” she said. But “the new building is … going to separate our department into two. The reason why only 20 faculty can service 1,400 students is because we have close collaborations. It’s ironic that one of the justifications is for bringing programs together when it’s actually going to result in splitting life sciences apart to the far reaches of campus.”