Dear Campus Community, I hope everyone is enjoying summer. On behalf of the Operations and Planning Team we are happy to see Fall arrive soon! We’ve had a busy summer and I am writing to provide a few updates regarding our campus master plan projects. First, I hope you will enjoy this edition of the Campus Master Plan project update, developed by Marketing Communications, it is a short 1 minute video showing updates in the University Center and Reid Chapel.
This week the Howard College of Arts and Sciences and Office of Spiritual Life are relocating to their new home in Burns and Chapman Halls. Additionally, we are expecting the top two floors of Ingalls Hall to be ready for occupancy on August 15th and will begin moving additional Howard College of Arts and Sciences departments into their newly renovated space. The bottom two floors will be ready a little later in Fall and Admission and Student Financial Services will relocate at that time. As a reminder we will rededicate these buildings, along with Reid Chapel on August 30 at 10am, ribbon cutting outside Reid Chapel at 9:45. Please make plans to join the ceremony and take some time to tour the facilities following the rededication.
If you’ve been in Cooney Hall, Brock School of Business lately you might have noticed the work to create a new Analytics Lab. This new lab will be ready for Fall semester. We are also working to expand the Bashinsky Athletic Academic Success Center, refreshing the Art Gallery, and refinishing the floors in Brock Recital Hall this summer. We expect these will be great enhancements for our students. The Rotunda Club and Rotunda are also complete, with just final punch list items, and we look forward to reopening the club with festivities in the Fall. The Daniel House in London is also getting a significant facelift this year and we are working to assist with the details from afar.
We hope our students will also be excited about the renovations in the residence halls to include new floors and newly finished doors in Vail, three completely refurbished shared baths in Vail, new kitchen and bath cabinets in Wesley, new plumbing in West Village, removal of popcorn ceiling in PhiMu, 42 upgraded bathrooms in West Campus and Beeson Woods, building HVAC controls, and RFID card access in all of Beeson Woods and West Village.
As you may have noticed the front gate turn lane was improved this summer with the addition of drainage and a curb. This project is nearly finished and is being landscaped. We completed some infrastructure enhancements also this summer with a new electrical transformer in Davis Library, new HVAC piping in Divinity, road paving and striping, and upgrades to four HVAC units in the Wright Center.
Our teams began residence hall refurbishment on May 14 and we will conclude this work next week with every room now updated with general maintenance, HVAC, painting, deep cleaning, and floor wax. We are excited!! So, beginning next week we will organize into strike teams and begin to tackle your work order requests. Today we have 1,005 in our queue, and so please be patient with us, as we work to try to remedy as much as possible prior to the beginning of the semester.
Happy August!