French Residence Hall has been on Longwood’s campus since 1923. It has been known, in recent years, as a place where students found sanctuary. Now, French Hall is being renovated in order for different departments to gain more space for the students.
According to Chief Information Officer for Longwood Penelope Howard, the French Hall project began five to eight years ago due to state project laws that the university had to “jump through.”
“The (official) project started in June of 2012, but it took at least six months to do all of the required demolition,” said Project Manager Kim Bass. “We were trying to salvage the shell of the building.”
The project has been held back for countless reasons, including the demolition process. The project was a lead construction (green counsel) project, which means things had to be recycled rather than just going to a dumpster.
“We didn’t have dump trucks lined up, just carrying all the debris away,” said Bass. “On top of that, we were having to do a selective demo, which retained all the structural elements of those walls, which was very difficult because we took out all the floor structures.”
French Hall will now be the new home of the entire Informational Technologies department (Coyner Hall), the radio and TV broadcasting sections of the Communication Studies department, the Office of Assessment and Institutional Research and WMLU.
According to Bass, the project was originally predicted to be completed by Jan. 31, but considering that is this Friday, the project has been pushed back to the middle of March with the hopes of every department moving in at the end of March or the beginning of April.
“There will be no interference with classes,” said Bass. “The IT department is going to make sure to only be moving on days that the campus is closed. As far as [Communication] Studies goes, the space that they’re going to get is in addition to their current space. Everything stays in the [Communication] Studies building, this is just an addition to their radio and TV program, mostly TV.”
The construction contract for this project was $12,325,000, the highest contract Bass has had the opportunity to work with while here at Longwood. This budget was only for the construction of this project, not for the equipment.
“The equipment money allotted for this project covered everything for IT because that was the main purpose of this building,” said Bass. “[Communication] Studies didn’t get quite enough money to cover the TV studio.”
The university has now gone back to the state of Virginia and asked for more money, in order to get all of the up-to-date material by fall semester. This will help the Communication Studies department get their studio the updated technology they need.
Bass would like to get all the material into the building sooner than the fall semester begins because she would like for the instructor to become familiar with the equipment so he/she can educate the students better.
French Hall will have a few new and fun innovations, along with the up-to-date material. Specifically, there is hope for better conference tables for faculty to use and technology that will allow them to project straight to the screen without hard-linked projectors for their computers.
There will be a new entrance in the south side of the building as opposed to the previous entrance on the north side. This will be a more student-friendly entrance that will be more inviting for the campus.
The goal is that French Hall will be fully up and running for students by the fall 2014 semester.
