Directors at the EMU and Student Recreation Center took the first, long-awaited steps toward an eventual redevelopment this week, bringing in three consultants to begin plans for new facilities at both buildings.
 
The plans that will arise from the consultants’ work may be extensive, including a new student union building and expanded recreation center facilities. They will, however, take time to enact.
The consultants, from the Washington, D.C.-based facility planning firm Brailsford & Dunlavey, have taken just the first step in a process to redevelop the buildings. Their finished report, by no means the last step in the development, will be released during the 2010–11 school year.
EMU Director Dusty Miller said it was possible for development to begin by the 2012–13 school year, when those currently in the first year of study for four-year degrees are scheduled to graduate, but the actual date of any development is still uncertain.
But Miller said the development was not only necessary, but long overdue.
“(The EMU) is confusing to navigate, busy and probably too small for student organizations and services,” he said.
The EMU is 60 years old, and Miller said it could no longer support a student body the size of the current one. There isn’t enough space, he said, and the space that does exist is
poorly allocated.
“Student organizations gain space in this building when space becomes available,” he said, rather than getting offices that necessarily meet their needs. “We want to cluster things that would work well together.”
To address the building’s problems, the EMU brought in the consultants, who spent their three days on campus convening focus groups to discuss the needs of those currently using the building.
They met with 17 groups of faculty, students and staff and estimated they had talked to more than 100 people.
The next step in the process will be a campus-wide survey sent out in April, from which the consultants will create a plan and cost estimate for the redevelopment.
Miller said the EMU was optimistic about the result, but that sentiment in favor of redeveloping the building has existed for years. In 2003, the University paid MHTN Architects about $200,000 to create a “Master Plan” for the EMU. That plan would have cost a total of nearly $29 million, taken nearly four years and added 152,300 square feet to
the building.
But the EMU never secured funding for the plan, and Miller said that by now it has become outdated because of increasing enrollment.
“Is today 2003?” he said. “No. Our University is serving a population much greater than in 2003.”
Brailsford & Dunlavey, which has worked with more than 300 colleges and universities to either redesign or develop facilities, will be paid $90,000 for its work. Miller said the cost and potential funding sources for the project were still uncertain.
One possibility for financing the new facility is creating a new EMU that contains classrooms. It’s an approach the University has used in building student housing recently, including the Living Learning Center and the new building set to be built east of the Knight Law Center. The classrooms allow the University to use state bonds to supplement building costs.
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