UC San Diego's $453 million Triton Center will open the weekend of Nov. 5 on the La Jolla campus. The four-building complex has been under construction for three years.

UCSD spokesperson Melinda Battenberg told the San Diego Union-Tribune that interior work is in its final stages and all four buildings will be completed this fall. The complex sits along Gilman Drive and will give the 45,000-student university a defined center it has long lacked.

The first piece is already in place. The four-story, nearly 80,000-square-foot Triton Health and Wellness Building opened July 14, consolidating Student Health Services, Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and Health Promotion Services under one roof. For the first time, the building also houses a UCSD Medical Group office offering primary care to faculty and staff, plus on-campus physical therapy that previously required leaving campus.

The pharmacy alone signals the scale of the upgrade: five prescription pick-up windows replace the old facility's single window.

Students currently wait six to 11 days for primary care appointments. Dr. Edward Junkins, executive director of student health and well-being, told the Union-Tribune in June that the new center expects to handle 20% to 30% more visits while maintaining those wait times.

Three buildings remain on the fall timeline. The Forum, a four-story structure, will house the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Celebration Hall, a 500-person venue for conferences and symposiums, along with the Strauss Family Meta Gallery focused on science, technology and the humanities. Alumni Hall, a six-story glass tower, will serve as a gathering spot for UCSD's nearly 270,000 graduates worldwide and feature an open-air rooftop terrace. Its exterior will broadcast concerts and sporting events in large format.

The Triton Administrative Services Building will house campus executives and serve as a teaching and learning hub.

Between the buildings, a central courtyard called Triton Plaza will offer ground-floor amenities including massage and virtual reality chairs. The university envisions it as the campus's main social gathering point.

The Illustrious Alumni Awards ceremony will be the first event held in the new Jacobs Celebration Hall, according to a UCSD announcement on Sept. 10.

"You will see people on this campus who we have never seen before … (and) not just La Jolla people," Chancellor Pradeep Khosla told the Union-Tribune.

The Triton Center is the latest piece of a campus overhaul the Union-Tribune has called one of the largest university expansions nationally in the past decade. Since becoming chancellor in 2012, Khosla has spent $7.1 billion transforming UCSD, adding high-rise dorms topping 20 stories.

He has said he plans to spend at least $4.5 billion more, with roughly $2.5 billion earmarked for dorms housing 6,000 students and the rest for a new hospital in Hillcrest. That building spree comes against a difficult fiscal backdrop: the university lost $85 million in grants and cut more than 1,000 jobs following federal research funding reductions, according to the Union-Tribune.