Collegiate Times

082508 construction center

Riding the wave of move-in madness at Virginia Tech, returning students may have taken notice of a number of construction sites throughout campus. In this four-part series, the Collegiate Times will provide an update on the coming structures in residence life and dining, parking services, student services, and athletic facilities.

One of the largest additions to Tech since the spring commencement is the construction of a new residence hall, located between Harper Hall and the Smith Career Center, set to open in the fall of 2009. Simply named New Residence Hall 1, because of a lack of sufficient funding from a privately investing family, the construction costs will run near $31 million before completion, according to plans released by student programs.

Richard Johnson, Director of Housing and Dining Services, said that the hall's opening would lift tensions for another project already underway. East Ambler- Johnston Hall will undergo significant renovations, displacing numerous upperclassmen wishing to live on campus through the fall of 2011.

"The new building will hold 250 beds, all placed in double rooms each with their own private bathroom in a hotel style," Johnson said.

The opening of a new and updated residence hall should help to tame the problem of overcrowding amongst residents, an issue the Associate Director of Occupancy Management Kenneth Belcher said is much less of a crisis than popularly believed.

"We usually plan for about 100 to 150 students over capacity, and this year we have 165, so we've brought the overcrowding way down due to the hard work of the staff," Belcher said.

The first floor of the hall will be occupied by a number of Tech student program offices, including Residence Life, Housing and Dining Services, Judicial Affairs, and Greek life.

"The only organization that will not be there is Career Services, simply because they just received their own state of the art building," Johnson said. "We are also very excited to finally bring all of these student programs together, it's been in the works for a while."

The basement will be inhabited by a new experimental test kitchen for dining services, serving as a meeting place for new companies to come and pitch potential menu items to dining hall supervisors. The room would also bring in focus groups and food committees to test products. Johnson added that a second new residence hall, set to begin construction in the fall of 2009, is on an indefinite hold because of budgetary constraints. The university has not been able to commit the necessary $33 million to begin this project. Another change to campus is a new dining hall, to be located in a newly renovated building behind McBryde. This state of the art facility will house 10 restaurants, opening sometime in 2011.

This dining hall will feature healthier options for food, such as organic and vegetarian products, bringing competition to Shultz Dining Hall in the academic block of campus. The first two floors of the five-story facility will be used as the dining hall, with the top three occupied by administrative offices and student activity spaces. This endeavor will cost the university $42 million.