Tech’s $22 million New Hall North is the first of many renovations to resident halls on Tech’s growing campus.Currently, a three-phase plan to renovate Tech Village apartments is underway. Construction for this $7 million plan will begin next month. The renovation will consist of completely gutting the apartments, replacing all windows, and adding awnings.
“There’s a challenge to do extensive work. You have to completely close the building down,” Charlie Macke, Residential Life director, said. “The stuff that you don’t see is where the problem is.
Resident halls such as MS Cooper & Pinkerton are in desperate need of repairs, including replacing all pipes and installing new air conditioning units. This $2-3 million project will leave the 190 students currently residing in MS Cooper & Pinkerton out of a place to live when the renovations, scheduled for a year from this summer, begin.
“My hope is to do some remodeling in MS Cooper Pinkerton,” Macke said. “We don’t have an emergency which needs tending to first.”
Macke said they worked on Cooper & Dunn halls this summer. They painted rooms, replaced windows, upgraded the lobby, and replaced all the beds.
“If we’re going to do it, I want to take the time and paint, put new flooring in and buy new furniture,” Macke said.
Tech doesn’t have the market to build all new resident halls and charge the students $3,100 per semester to live there. Also, at the moment, Tech can’t afford to burden themselves with that sort of debt. It is more feasible to remodel.
“Things change, but as things are today, I think our numbers are probably okay. I think we are stable for rooms,” Macke said. “The fact that we are out of the hotel tells me that if we had another hall, we would’ve been able to handle the 80 student overflow, but now we would have 300 empty rooms.
