After a delay in starting the renovation of the dining hall and other areas of Woodworth Complex, the project will soon be under way to improve the building. During the construction, however, the dining facility will need to be closed.
Greg Graham, assistant director of facilities planning and management, said earlier in the summer that there were some issues causing a delay with the work but that hopefully things would soon be moving forward.
And moving is exactly what they are doing. University personnel and equipment will be moving all the furniture and equipment out of the dining hall and into warehouse storage until the project is finished, Ann Talley, director of residence halls dining service, said.
"Our other locations under renovation were so old that the equipment and furniture that we could sell at auction, we did," she said, but the furniture and equipment at Woodworth Complex is new enough that it will be saved.
Talley said that she has not yet been told how soon construction will start, but the goal is to have everything moved by January of 2006.
With the closing of the dining hall also comes the problem of taking one location off the list of places for students to eat on campus -- meaning other facilities could become overburdened -- but steps have been taken to try to counteract any problems, Talley said.
Alan Hargrave, director of housing and residence life, said in a prepared statement that the university plans to open these new facilities as quickly as possible.
"We are concerned, but we've taken steps to avoid issues that might arise," Talley said.
The dining area of Noyer Centre currently has only four cashiers, but three more will be added when students begin moving back, and one more can be added if needed, Talley said.
In addition to adding more workers at Noyer Centre, the Atrium will stay open for dinner on Friday nights, instead of its current closing time of 3 p.m., but Talley wasn't yet sure if it would stay open late for the entire weekend.
When students are first moving back to campus, they tend to not eat at the times they normally would, so any problems that could arise will most likely only last until students get into their normal grinds, Talley said.
She also added that to help with any overcrowding that might happen, students should try to eat a little later or earlier than they normally would and that some facilities, such as Cardinal Crossing and LaFollette Square, can handle more business than they normally do.
"I can't speak with confidence about overload because we can't know for sure where students will choose to eat," Talley said, but she and her department have tried to think of every possibility in terms of seats, employees, hours, food and anything else.
Talley also said that when the renovations are complete, it will still take some time to train employees how to use a lot of the equipment because things like a Mongolian grill and a gas-fired wood-stone oven are not at any other dining areas on campus.
In Hargrave's prepared statement, he also said the university appreciates the business of students, and these new facilities will better meet their needs.
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