While the renovation of Mulvane Hall, now known as the Boyd Center, has been complete for a few months now, University President Pat Long will not hesitate to tell anyone how it has impacted Baker’s Baldwin City campus.
On Jan. 18, Long ventured to Wichita for the Kansas State Building Awards Program to accept an honor from the Associated General Contractors for the Mulvane transformation and that has further excited her for an upcoming renovation project at BU.
Long is excited to present a conceptual design of a newly-renovated Harter Union and Allen Dining Hall to the Board of Trustees Friday.
“I just can’t wait,” Long said. “The cafeteria will be down all summer, so when the students come back in the fall, they’ll walk into this new eating place. That’s how quickly this is going to happen. The summer is when we’re going to start the demolition in the construction in the union.”
Although there are only blueprints for Long to look at and fathom what the renovations will look like, she has visualized what the experience will be like when everything is complete.
“I can just see students over there at the coffee bar and playing pool and just relaxing, studying and just really engaging in a different way,” Long said.
The timeline of construction for the project will be broken down into a number of phases, and Long said phase one will commence immediately, pending approval of the BOT at its meeting Friday.
“The rest of the building, at least phase one, will be done by the summer of 2013, so this is a fast track project,” Long said. “I’ll also start raising money for phase two, which is a 400-seat multipurpose room that could be divided off and go behind the current union. What that would do is give us a place for student performances, large dinners, banquets and the community could use it. It would certainly change the way that we use the building.”
Part of Long’s motivation behind renovating Harter Union involves the use students and staff get out of the building for the amount it currently costs.
“The union is the most inefficient building we have on campus and the most costly building we have on campus because we waste energy,” Long said. “It doesn’t have all of the new things with energy management. It is very old in its infrastructure. Just what we are going to do with that alone is going to save us money.”
One of the main areas of the union that is costing Baker money that is not being used as frequently as it could be is the basement. Different offices and group meeting areas in the basement have been relocated over the past couple of years due to mold and leaking pipes.
“There will be different pipes, so the leakage in the basement will stop,” Long said. “In terms of cosmetic right now, we won’t do a lot of cosmetic, but we’ll clean it up down there and stop the leaking … If we get all of those things done, where we clean it up and (are) able to do a little bit of repainting and get the water stopped, there are still some really nice spaces down there that may be used much more quickly than we thought.”
A construction company has yet to have been selected for the project, but Long believes she found a winner in GLMV for an architectural firm.
“They do a lot of work in collaboration with Sodexo,” Long said. “We chose to use them because we want everything to look alike. There is a lot of economy of scale that we can use.”
With an uplift of Allen Dining Hall looming, Sodexo will gradually expand Baker’s dining services. Jeff McCullough has recently been hired to be the general manager of dining services.
“He was integral in the redesign of the Emporia State (University) union, so he has brought a lot of really good experience to us and been very receptive to our requests,” Long said. “I think he is doing a good job. He is so Baker. He likes our students and likes what he is doing.”
Long said Allen Dining Hall will have more of a food court feel to it and be more spacious.
“What I imagine is that they will see a very open dining hall, new lighting, new flooring, new tables and chairs,” Long said. “Instead of going through a line, you’ll go to stations. You can have an entree if you’d like or burger or fries or a vegetarian (option.)”
The layout and meal options will not be the only things changing to Allen Dining Hall and the food services in general.
“The other thing that will be coming is new food plans,” Long said. “So students who live off campus or in the fraternities and sororities, if they would like a meal ticket or meal card they could always get a coffee if they wanted to and put money on that meal plan. That is also going to help because I think it will give students more choices and being honest, I think we’re going to see the volume in the cafeteria just go way up from our students who live off campus now because they’ll love the options and it is going to be affordable.”
When Sodexo took over Baker’s dining services, there were discussions of the Wildcat Cafe becoming an Einstein Bros Bagels, but Long indicated otherwise.
“I think it will become the grill kind of place,” Long said. “It will still be there, but I think it will be the station for where the hamburgers and the sandwiches will be. I think it will probably be open later. I think it will probably have later hours than the cafeteria as a whole.”
While Long did not wish to discuss specifics for how much she believed the renovations would cost, she did credit BOT member Susanne Teel for giving a $1 million donation to the project.
“She gave to (the Mulvane renovation,) but this has been her passion project from day one and she is the chair of the student affairs and management committee,” Long said. “Back before I came to Baker, she was on that committee and she was asking students what they wanted then. So this has been her dream and passion for all that time.”
As Long understands Teel’s dream and witnessed the leadership of Professor of Biology Darcy Russell during the Mulvane renovation, she is prepared to lead the charge of transforming Harter Union into a more student-friendly environment.
“As you can tell, I’m excited about this,” Long said. “This is my project.”
