By Tommy O’Neill
The renovation of Memorial Hall is planned to start in June after students leave for summer break.
For the past few years, the administration has been focused on creating a plan to improve all the residence halls, according to Vice President of Finance Chuck Mann.
“We saw when students chose not to come to Hood it was because residence halls in other colleges were nicer in comparison,” Mann said.
Hood College developed a long-range plan to address that problem, and the first step was building Blazer Hall, which was designed to give students the suite-style rooms that can be seen at other colleges.
The next step is to completely renovate the other five residence halls. The board made a 10-year plan, requiring two years of renovation for each of the five buildings– one year for the new building design, and one year for construction.
Memorial Hall will be the first of the five dorms to be renovated. “We know that all of the buildings need to be renovated, but we can’t do them all at the same time,” Mann said. “The next buildings in line to receive renovations are Meyran, then Smith, Coblentz, and Shriner.”
The first thing the building committee is looking to change is the accessibility of Memorial, Mann said. There will be a ramp added along the front side of the building to make it more accessible.
New landscaping is going to be added in the backside of Memorial, including another small quad, as well as a large path that can be used for cars to stop by and drop things off for move-in days.
The ground floor of Memorial will be open with a lounge area like that in Blazer Hall, and have a new kitchen and seating area. The building committee plans on adding a new HVAC system, elevator, and stairwells. The stairwells and elevator will require use of student IDs in order to improve security in the building.
The first floor will have a new lounge that will separate the rooms into wings on the left and right sides of the building. New bathrooms will be added on the left and right sides as well.
The second and third floors will both have one suite-style room with their own bathroom. The fourth floor will have a lounge added as well as new bathrooms in between the dorm rooms.
The design schedule for the construction for Memorial Hall is anticipated to start sometime around June 2022. The building will be closed through the 2022-2023 academic year, with the building scheduled to reopen in August 2023.
“It’s going to have a completely different look than it does today, with new windows adding light, lounges, bathrooms, kitchen…It’s going to be a huge improvement for the building,” Mann said.
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