For students cutting through Andrus field, walking down High Street, or even looking through the windows at Olin Library, the looming structure along Wyllys Avenue has become little more than a mundane landmark on the daily route to class. For next year’s freshmen, however, that iconic castle-like archway won’t be a 150-year-old run-down field house full of history and nostalgia. Instead, it will be the shiny new Suzanne Lemberg Usdan University Center.
Scheduled to open this fall, Usdan University Center will replace and expand upon the many dining facilities and student services currently provided by Davenport Campus Center. For those who can’t wait or simply want to know what they’re missing, however, a virtual tour beginning at the main entrance facing High Street can offer a small preview of what’s in store.
Upon entry, students will first come upon a large open space with scattered chairs and tables surrounding a café and deli. Here students can grab a quick sandwich or enjoy a leisurely cup of coffee with a friend. Most of the attention, however, will go to the impressive spiraling grand staircase at the center of the hall. According to University Center Director Rick Culliton, the spiral staircase had been an early idea of the master planner Adam Gross, part of the architectural planning firm Ayers Saint Gross.
“The architects have been really great in seeing this process through the whole way, making sure everything was satisfactory at every stage,” Culliton said.
Ascending this central staircase, students will reach a large area housing buffet lines, check-out registers, display cases, and state-of-the-art kitchen facilities, which occupy the majority of the second floor. This large area is flanked by twin dining halls on either side, each seating about 315 people.
Not only will this new space replace the current campus center’s dining facilities, but since MoCon will be closing its doors at the end of this year, it will also serve to fill the needs of all the students, primarily freshmen, who would regularly dine in the large dining hall.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the new Usdan University Center is the idea that all four classes, for potentially the first time ever, will be forced into mass interaction. This follows one of the goals listed in Phase I of the drafted Master Planning Process, which describes meals in an institution that serve functions besides nourishment.
“They provide opportunities to refresh one’s sense of the wider community, to catch up with acquaintances, to start or continue important conversations,” read the report, compiled by the trustees. “They can also provide opportunities to meet with a faculty member, or to hear a visiting speaker, or to recognize some special event.”
Breakfast and lunch in the new University Center will help take on this new social task. They will mimic that of the current campus center fare, with a la carte meals ranging from pizza and burgers to a Vegan Café. In addition, specialty dining such as the Kosher Kitchen, providing all Kosher foods, will be moved from its current location underneath the Butterfield dorms. Students will be able to enjoy these meals either in one of the second story’s two twin dining halls, on a spacious second level terrace, or outside on the ground level.
“The southeast exposure will make this a place with a large amount of sunlight,” Culliton said, standing outside on the shielded terrace. “People will really want to be out here.”
Similar to the current campus center, all classes will share a lunchtime space, but the real change is that the same will be true for dinners. Seven days a week, the main kitchen, located on the second level, will offer only a MoCon-style “board program” where students use one of their “meals” or pay a fixed price for “all you can eat” dining. Seating for dinner will be limited to the twin dining halls, and access to the outdoor areas and terrace will be closed off.
Journeying up one more set of stairs or using the elevators, which provide handicapped access for the entire building, students will gain access to the top floor. Faculty and staff essentially have this third level café and common area all to themselves. It will seat approximately 130 people, and while it will be used for several lunchtime receptions, catered events, and conferences open to students, the dining will be directed toward staff and faculty lunches. A lounge area on the third floor will also be available when events and receptions are not being held.
“I imagine it would at other times be a place students could grab a comfy chair and relax, hide away, ” Culliton added.
The new University Center, however, will be far from a place to simply relax or grab a bite. The first floor will provide a conveniently-located box office, where students and community members can acquire tickets for music and theater performances on campus. It will also house the WSA offices and provide a much larger, centralized space for Wesleyan Station, the campus post office. The new mail center will provide a single mailbox for each student.
Additionally, half of a large, partitioned space near another entrance on the first floor will house the Information Technology Services (ITS) center and the computer store, which is currently located in a smaller area in the Science Center. A store selling mugs, pencils, sweatshirts, and other Wesleyan merchandise will occupy the other half of this partitioned area. Textbooks, however, will still be sold at Broad Street Books.
Other added features include a specially constructed basement rehearsal space. The spacious room’s soundproof walls are ideally large enough to house even large steel drum practices.
With wide halls, multiple stairways, and spacious common areas, students may find that while using the center is easy, using its lengthy, dragging name in everyday conversations is not. As students have a time-honored tradition of sanctioning campus buildings with endearing nicknames such as “the Butts,” “MoCon,” and “WestCo,” future campus visitors shouldn’t be surprised if Usdan University Center gains a nickname of its own.
To access an online poll and vote on your favorite nickname for the new University Center, visit www.wesleyanargus.com. The complete campus master plan can be viewed at www.wesleyan.edu/masterplan.
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