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| Whitener residents look
toward big move |
Sam Calhoun
Academic Affairs Beat
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Foster Hunt | The AppalachianRobbins said Students in Whitener
Hall should see no immediate effects of class quality due parking
lot construction in April.
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By the summer of
2005, the academic departments now housed in Whitener Hall will
be relocated to a renovated Belk Library, and the existing building
will be demolished. Completion of the new Library & Information
Commons is scheduled for December 2004.
“When it is complete, we will then move [Belk]
Library into the new library and go through a construction evolution
to renovate Belk Library to fit the occupants of Whitener,”
Director for Design and Construction Dr. Clyde D. Robbins said Monday. |
That renovation
process is slated to occur between January and May 2005, Project
Manager for Whitener Hall and the new library Patrick A. Beville
said Monday.
Whitener is home to the departments of political science, criminal
justice and history, as well as Freshman Seminar and the Hubbard
Center. These departments will not only have to deal with moving
but also the construction that will accompany it.
“Our most immediate problem is going to be construction,”
department of history chair Dr. Michael L. Krenn said Monday.
Moreover, the construction begins soon. The Whitener parking lot
will close by April 1, a construction fence will be built and the
18-month new library project will begin, Beville said.
“The ground-breaking [of the parking lot] will not affect Whitener,”
Robbins said. “The library is being built as an independent
project around Whitener.”
A concern is how this will affect academics.
Many classrooms in Whitener are literally feet away from where the
construction will take place. Krenn said he believes a big problem
will be noise.
“In the summer, you have to have some of the windows open for
adequate ventilation,” Krenn said. He said he is worried the
construction fence will not be enough to block the distractions.
Another concern is parking for students and faculty.
“We’ll lose all the parking, which is somewhat of a premium
on this campus already,” Krenn said. “It’s going
to be traffic problems out there.”
Whether or not Belk Library will be adequate to serve its new purpose
is also a concern.
“Whether [the new facility] will be adequate depends on student
enrollment,” Krenn said. “There will be massive amounts
of space in [Belk Library]; there just won’t be money to renovate
it.”
Most of the top floor of Belk Library will be open space, but a
few political science offices will be located there, and a large
chunk of classroom space will be opened on the bottom floor.
“Our design to renovate Belk Library provides for a possible
25 percent more square feet per each department than Whitener,”
Beville said.
The issue of what will happen after the moving of Whitener is still
undecided.
“We are anticipating that what we’re doing in Belk Library
to house those departments is probably a three to five year evolution
at the very best, but there is no indication yet of when [the money
needed for a new academic building] will be available,” Robbins
said.
Krenn said he believes Whitener is a “bad building” structurally,
and he said he feels the future renovated Belk Library will be better.
“Wherever we go, we want that to be our home,” Krenn said. |
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