The campus center this month came one step closer to being renovated when the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate allocated $20,560 for architectural plans to revamp the center.
The funds will go toward hiring an architect who, according to TCU senator and outgoing historian Antonella Scarano, will focus on furniture, carpeting, painting and lighting, a project that will be completed during the summer.
The architect, Brooke Trivas, will develop a design that will be presented at an April 30 meeting of the committee overseeing the upgrades; that group includes Scarano and representatives from various university projects. A contractor will be able to use the completed drawings to actually begin work on the center.
Construction, assuming funding is obtained, could take place this summer, Scarano, a junior, said. Funding will likely come from both private donors and the administration, she explained.
"In order to fix the campus center, we're not moving walls or anything," outgoing TCU Treasurer Matt Shapanka said. "But we need to figure out what we can change, and it costs money to bring in an architect and take a look at the place."
The extent to which the university carries out Trivas' recommendations depends on future funding that has not yet been secured. This funding may come from donors to the university, Scarano said.
The renovation project has been broken up into different parts.
The first priority will be the first floor and the area in front of The Rez coffee shop, and the second priority will be the second floor, according to Scarano. The third priority will be redoing the Large Conference Room.
"If we get enough funding to do all three, all three will be finished by the end of the summer as well," Scarano said.
Considering the scale of the project, a formal evaluation is required, TCU senators said.
"When it comes to big-scale construction projects, you can't just walk in and eyeball what you need," Scarano said. "You need a professional to come in and draw out the plans."
"We have Hotung, which is so modern, but it looks sort of disconnected because it's so new," Scarano said. "So we're trying to bring the rest of the campus center up to par in terms of bright colors, better lighting and furniture that doesn't look so outdated."
The recent allocation comes as a result of longstanding efforts to improve the campus center.
The Tufts Board of Trustees in February expressed an interest in improving the campus center, approving the creation of the committee that will soon review the architectural plans. Senior Laura Herman, the outgoing liaison between the student body and the trustees' Administration and Finance Committee, had suggested the trustees consider physical upgrades to the center.
"The Senate's been pushing to have the campus center renovated for a long time, like years," Shapanka, a senior, said. "A campus center is a big thing to us. Right now, the campus center is less of an actual center — a place where people go to hang out — and more of a hallway, something people pass through going to class. We'd like to change that."
Scarano saw this need for improvement and adopted as her Senate project the renovation of the center.
She said that, to make the center a true destination, the university should work with what it has.
"When I first joined Senate, everyone was talking about the campus center," she said. "They've all been waiting for the campus center to be torn down and reconstructed. But … it's not going to be torn down any time soon."
Shapanka stressed that the Senate would not fund the entire renovation project.
"We'll have Senate pay for the architect and take it from there," Shapanka said. "But we want to get the ball rolling, and this is a necessary step to doing that."
Trivas hopes to help with revitalizing the campus center while maintaining fiscal responsibility.
"The scope is to review the public areas within the campus center in order to upgrade and enhance the finishes and quality of spaces," she said. "Right now, the spaces are generally dark, so we're trying to revitalize them while also being careful not to overspend. We can't just blow everything out, so we're trying to do all these things in an economical and efficient way."
The grant fits well with a recent $100,000 loan to Tufts Student Resources (TSR), approved by the Senate on March 29, for revamping The Rez, a student-run coffee shop in the campus center.
"We thought, as long as we were focusing on the campus center, we might as well get started on other areas of the project," Shapanka said.
