The offices in the Old University Union, once used for student groups, remain locked and in disuse three years after their occupants moved to the New Union.
According to James Koval, University Union director, nearly $14 million has been allocated this year by the State University Construction Fund to renovate the space. The building has sat in disrepair since renovations were halted three years ago due to lack of funds.
Koval said the Old Union’s roof needs to be restored, its electrical problems needs to be fixed and asbestos abatement must be carried out.
A hallway that was meant to connect the New and Old Unions was never built, and rooms that were eventually meant to be filled by more student groups now house administrative offices.
The funds provided this year must be used in the next five years, Koval said. If they are not used by then, they will be reallocated.
“Nobody seems to know when renovations will start,” he said.
According to Karen Fennie, a spokeswoman for Physical Facilities, plans for the Old Union renovation project are now underway. The planning procedures, she says, may go on into next year, and then consultants and engineers will be called in.
“It will take about 18 months to do the designs,” Fennie said. “Then it will take two to three years to do the construction.”
For now, though, Fennie says that “some rough ideas are being talked about.”
Fennie and Koval share a major concern: “The Old Union desperately needs a new roof,” says Fennie.
“It leaks, it’s old and brittle and it has to be taken out otherwise its going to start ruining the structure underneath [it],” Koval says. “Everyone knows that but there wasn’t money for it before.”
Regardless of the plan, Fennie said, a lot of work will have to be done, and “the building may need to be gutted,” she said.
For the Student Association, however, the focus of any work done on the Old Union will be related to the space that they say is not being allocated efficiently to student group offices.
A resolution to write a letter to the administration, asking them to grant use of the abandoned space to student groups, will be debated and voted on during next Monday’s assembly meeting.
“In 2001 the administration took the offices in the Old Union on the second floor and claimed they were going to renovate them,” said Eric Katz, who sits on the Research and Planning committee and authored the resolution.
“It’s now 2005 getting into 2006 and there’s been no renovation,” said Katz. “In fact, some of those offices that haven’t been renovated are now being redistributed to university programs, when that space was traditionally for student groups.”
Koval says his superiors had instructed him not to assign the empty offices in the Old Union to student groups. He said that he will begin to offer the rooms to selected student groups if there is no plan to renovate the building by spring 2006.