Residential Life is entering the next phase of its campus-wide Master Plan renovation.
When the spring semester ends after final exams next week, the Blake Hall rooms will be unavailable until 2008.
In accordance with the Master Plan, the 202-bed residence hall will be closed while it undergoes renovation this summer. It is scheduled to reopen for the spring 2008 semester.
Steve Waller, Res Life associate director of facilities, said the building was recently reviewed by the construction team. He said Res Life hopes to have the construction project advertised for bidding by the end of May and to have successful bids received by June.
“We’re optimists,” he said.
Waller said the inside of the building will be gutted, and new windows will be installed. A three-floor addition to the west end will add 50 new rooms. The building will be able to house 250 residents when it reopens.
“The architect is behind schedule by a few months,” Waller said. “We hoped to have it opened for [fall 2007], but we’re looking at a 12 to 16-month construction time. It won’t be finished until fall 2007.”
Renee Snider, Res Life associate director of operations, said Res Life employees assigned to Blake Hall will either be unaffected by the closure of the building or reassigned to other halls.
“Blake’s a small hall, so it’s not affecting many people,” she said.
Res Life will also begin work on the Pentagon buildings this summer.
Construction was scheduled to begin during the fall 2005 semester, but the buildings were left open to accommodate Hurricane Katrina transfer students.
A program is also being designed to replace the roofing on the Pentagon buildings.
Waller said work will begin in two weeks to remove tile flooring from LeJeune hall.
“The other three buildings are being used for summer conferences,” Waller said. “By the fall, we’ll have LeJeune operational and then work will begin on [Jackson, Taylor and Beauregard halls].”
Waller said the campus has adequate housing space to accommodate those students who would have lived in Blake Hall and the Pentagon.
“We added 500 beds to [West Campus Apartments] and 150 to Broussard [Hall], and that gave us 650 beds of a buffer to account for the take down and rebuild of Graham [Hall], the take down of Blake and going through West and East Laville [halls],” he said. “Right now, our capacity is more than enough to absorb those 200 students.”
The Graham complex should be completed in time for use in the fall 2007 semester, Waller said.
The Daily Reveille reported Feb. 7 that the Graham complex will house three new residential colleges – the global studies and business residential colleges and a new freshmen residential college to replace the one housed in Herget Hall.
The Master Plan also calls for the renovations of West Laville Hall in January 2008. After those renovations are completed during summer 2009, the renovation of East Laville Hall will begin.
The Laville project, which Waller said is still in design stages, should be completely finished by summer 2010.
While the Graham and West Laville construction schedules will overlap at the end of 2007, West Laville will accommodate some Graham Hall students while construction is completed on the second building in the Graham complex.
The students will move into the Graham complex over the 2007 winter break, Waller said, so West Laville can be renovated.
Waller said Res Life does not expect any changes or obstacles to the current construction schedule.
“The architect is comfortable with the estimates,” he said. “But all prices are going up and that trickles through everything.”
 
Contact Parker Wishik at [email protected]