Students and faculty raised questions
to Vice Chancellor for Business Affairs Jane P. Helm last
Tuesday during a forum on campus construction.
Helm’s presentation was an overview of campus construction
ranging from central campus projects like the Solarium on
Plemmons Student Union to the recently completed Living-Learning
Center.
The forum was co-sponsored by the office of Business Affairs
and the campus planning committee of Faculty Senate.
Faculty Senate members raised concerns about Business Affairs,
issuing a statement calling for more cooperation between
faculty and administrators on construction.
“Many of the renovations and repairs we’re doing
in buildings like Founder’s Hall are necessary just
to bring things up to basic building code requirements, dealing
with things like windows and asbestos,” Helm said.
“[The renovations] are just absolutely necessary to
continue using these buildings.”
Helm pointed out some areas such as the bookstore renovation
as continuing problem spots in campus construction due to
delays.
“Multiple prime contractors is just an impossible way
to build,” Helm said, referring to the system of hiring
multiple contractors for different parts of the same job
that Appalachian State University was required to use on
the bookstore construction.
“[Multi-prime] is just a nightmare, no single firm
ends up being responsible for the whole project, and it’s
very hard to coordinate when anything goes wrong.”
The bookstore is currently due for completion in 2005, Helm
said.
The questions did not center on any one topic or concern.
“I keep hearing about this 10 year master plan, which
10 years does it cover… and what exactly is it?”
said Dr. Kathleen M. Simon, head of the campus planning commission.
Helm said the plan runs from 2001-2010 and includes all the
construction the university would ideally like to do in that
period. This plan calls for additional academic buildings
in the future, as well as the eventual demolition of L.S.
Dougherty.
“Quite candidly, if we could take down about five of
our academic buildings and replace them with new ones we
would, but we’re obviously not taking anything down
until we have another place to go,” Helm said.
“There’s problems with where we walk, how we
get here, there are miles of sidewalk that need to be redone,
how are we going to do that if the state keeps cutting money
year after year?” said Evan Moody, a junior interdisciplinary
studies major and Student Government Association senator.
“We’re very careful, but there’s nothing
we can do about a lot of this. Sure we can sweep the sand
away, but one truck can come through and undo that,”
Helm said. “Our renovation budget is not going up.”
At one point, Helm was asked if any of the original campus
buildings would remain.
“We’re leaving a lot of the original buildings,
but some of the original I’d like to see gone. We’d
like to retain the character, but a building like Welborne
is not attractive and it's falling in.”
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