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January 2000
Quad renovation carries on tradition
of heeding customer
Take a wrong turn in the East unit of Cary Quadrangle, and you would swear you wandered into a home-improvement store.
There in an unused dining room is a mock-up of two "suites" with a shared bathroom between them.
As planning proceeded on the $43.5 million renovation of Cary Quadrangle, focus groups and individual residents were asked to take a look at the prototypes, which include furniture and closets, and offer feedback.
The result will be the ultimate in user-driven design. For instance, two models of a bureau for the closet were on display. The winning version will be a hybrid of both.
This summer, Cary East will be gutted and work begun on updating the 72-year-old building, the oldest residence hall on campus.
When work is finished, Cary East rooms will resemble the popular environs of Hillenbrand Hall, with semiprivate bathrooms and air conditioning.
The Northeast and West units will receive the same complete renovation. Work in Cary South and Northwest will be less extensive - although roofs, mechanical systems and all interiors will get attention.
As is the case with Hillenbrand, residents will pay a premium to live in the Cary units with semiprivate baths and air conditioning.
All work in Cary units should be completed in 2006.
"We're doing the Cary project in six phases over six years to keep displacement of residents to a minimum," says John Sautter, vice president for housing and food services.
With enrollment at West Lafayette running at record levels - and new-student applications indicating another large freshman class - planners have set aside additional space for undergraduates who want to live on campus.
"We are sensitive to the housing crunch on campus, but the Cary project is vital to the continued success of our on-campus residence system," Sautter says. "We hope to balance the rooms being taken out of service by opening up some additional space."
That space will be in residences traditionally occupied by older or married students.
A number of units of Purdue Village - the new name for Married Student Housing - will be occupied in the fall by unmarried undergraduates. The same goes for Hilltop Apartments.
Although undergraduates in the Purdue Village and Hilltop Apartments will not be in one of the more traditional undergraduate halls, the same services will be available to them. For instance, resident counselors will be assigned in the same ratio as in the halls.
The Cary project was driven by the need to comprehensively address ongoing maintenance and rework the halls to better fit changing demands of residents.
"Cary was built from the 1920s to about the beginning of World War II," Sautter says. "The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of residents who lived here when the place was new have significantly different wants and needs."
Cary now has a capacity of 1,555. At the completion of the six phases, the five units will accommodate 1,255.
As Cary overhaul begins, food-service
and dining consolidation reconsidered
Mammoth projects to revamp and remodel Cary Quadrangle and consolidate and renovate food services in the residence halls were to be done at the same time, beginning at the conclusion of spring semester.
Because of the five-to-seven-year timespan for the projects, tackling them concurrently would help avoid a continual state of ongoing construction and achieve economies by paying for the work with a single bond issue.
Instead, the Cary project will move ahead and the food service project will remain in the planning stage.
The food-service project as first envisioned is simply too costly.
"Architects' estimates of the work came out significantly higher than anticipated," says John Sautter, vice president for housing and food services. "We have gone back to looking at what the market is telling us andhow we can rework this needed modernization and consolidation project to meet the needs of our customers."
The plan that emerged in early 1999 called for consolidation of the 11 existing cook-and-serve operations at West Lafayette to five. Those would be in contemporary, renovated space on the residential campus. The first were to be new dining commons located at Windsor and Tarkington halls.
The planned changes are driven by residents' wants and needs. More and more, students balk at the notion of limited choices served cafeteria-style.
Cooking lots of chowder or beef and noodles and serving the same selection to everybody is, of course, cheaper than offering lots of choices. But that's also a formula for losing residents to other living arrangements, Sautter says.
The numbers tell the story: Meals are served at 11 cook-and-serve locations, but just four halls - Hillenbrand, Owen, Earhart and Cary - serve 50 percent of the meals. The other 50 percent of meals are served in seven halls.
At Cary, students have an array of choices, not unlike a shopping mall food court - from fix-your-own pizza to stir-fry to hot, fresh baked goods.
Earhart, Owen and Hillenbrand offer carryout. Hillenbrand is open until 8 p.m.
"Students like the choices they get at these halls, and they don't mind walking to have those options," says Sarah Johnson, director of food service for University Residences.
Simply extending hours and increasing offerings in all halls isn't an option. Labor and other costs would price Purdue residence halls out of the market.
So the logical alternative was to consolidate operations and at the same time put in place the options residents flock to now.
Consultants offered Purdue planners a number of possibilities, among them erecting one huge commons to serve all 11,000 or so residents. Another option was renovating all existing operations one by one. Elements of these options appealed to staff and advisers - current and former residents. A compromise emerged to reinforce a "neighborhood" concept of having a modern, choice-filled dining commons a short walk from all residents.
The plan called for closing the McCutcheon Hall cook-and-serve operation to create immediate savings as the Windsor-Tarkington projects began.
At the conclusion of consolidation and renovation, a savings of about $2 million annually was expected.
Although the option of building five dining commons is being reconsidered, the need to reduce costs by closing operations hasn't changed.
"McCutcheon will not reopen in the fall for food service," Johnson says, adding that residents will be able to visit any of the 10 remaining food operations.
Currently, planners are taking new site visits and working with consultants to come up with a new plan to guide food service at the halls.
Sautter and Johnson are confident a new plan will emerge by summer, with work to start in mid-2001.
Stories by Jay Cooperider, Perspective Managing Editor
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