Students might not call them home anymore, but the university continues to use former residence halls, with more plans for them in the future.
“Melrose Hall and Greve Hall are becoming ‘surge’ spaces, which designates them as available temporary space while other renovations are taking place,” Betsey Creekmore, associate vice chancellor in finance and administration, said.
Creekmore described the process of finding space for everyone while also updating buildings on campus as complicated.
“It’s like a huge jigsaw puzzle, but fortunately no one person has to put it together,” Creekmore said. “But it’s all put together trying to make the resources of the institution stretch as far as they can and as well as they can.
“Art studios were moved into Melrose Hall during the summer, and when the Music Building goes under renovation in the fall, individual performers and ensembles will use the space available in Melrose for practice,” she said.
The architecture in Melrose Hall, full of smaller rooms previously used as singles for student housing, saves the cost of converting the rooms to practice rooms. Administration can station individual performers in every other room, so that musicians do not hear music from adjoining rooms through the walls.
“We’re getting Melrose ready to receive music, so we cleaned it out and made some very minor modifications like changing over the security system,” Creekmore said. “And we took two walls out for music professors because the height of the ceiling in Melrose was very low.”
Greve Hall will soon play host to some with research grants, as well as perhaps governor’s chairpeople, she said.
Unless the grant required a minor remodeling effort, Greve Hall should stay the same, she said.
“We’re not going to do a massive renovation of Greve Hall,” she said. “It’s in pretty good shape.”
“Examples of research work that would call for minor renovations might include taking out some walls to provide a classroom-size or workroom-size space that a Greve Hall dorm room does not provide or modifying the wire infastructure to support heavy electronic use for computational work,” she said.
Unlike its peers, Strong Hall will not be used as “surge” space because of its lack of air conditioning and elevators, though the long-term planning for Strong includes the migration of the entire anthropology department to the former residence hall.
The expendiency of the planned renovations for the hall hinges on capital outlay funding, which she said did not come for the project last year.
The hall remains the home of Sophie’s Place cafeteria.
The university is updating the fire safety of some current residence halls with new sprinkler systems, Mike West, associate director for Facilities and Services, said.
“The systems were added to Humes Hall and Reese Hall over the summer, and plans are made to add systems to the Apartment Residence Hall in the fall and North Carrick Hall and South Carrick Hall in summer 2010,” West said.
After that, all the university residence halls will have sprinkler systems.
“Any fire safety expert will tell you that having a fire-suppression system, whether it be in a residence hall or a home, is the best prevention to property damage and life safety that you can have,” he said.
The Apartment Residence Hall also will have its hot-water system get a facelift when the individual, 30-gallon water heaters are taken out in the fall and replaced by hot water from the UT steam plant, West said.
As students’ demands call for more apartment-style housing, Volunteer Hall and Laurel Apartments have risen up, taking the place of other older dormitories like Strong Hall, Melrose Hall and Greve Hall.
“People want their own individual bedrooms and their own private space,” West said.