All the doors weren’t on the hinges yet at the newly expanded EMU Craft Center Thursday afternoon. Craft Center administrators, still without a real office, have sectioned off part of the large room to house their desks and computers, which have collected a thin film of sawdust.
Not that they’re complaining. The center just received an expansion of more than 1,000 square feet.
“The wood shop is now roughly twice
as big,” Craft Center Coordinator Diane Loffman said. The old one was becoming
a safety hazard because it wasn’t big enough to fit tools, wood and people, she added. Across the hall, the ASUO Women’s Center just added more than 400 square feet by extending its floor space into
the hallway.
“Before, people were right on top of each other,” Women’s Center Interim Director Erin O’Brien said, adding that the old office only had space for staff. “There wasn’t a usable space to fulfill our mission.”
These projects have one thing in common: They took place in the EMU’s East Wing, which, in May 2003, was slated to be 70 percent demolished and reconstructed in a more modern and efficient design. However, the “EMU Master Plan,” a multimillion dollar face-lift on the 55-year-old building, was indefinitely delayed in the summer of 2003 due to budget woes. Now, improvements are being made one section at a time.
EMU Director Dusty Miller said the student building fee doesn’t have the more than $40 million needed to complete the Master Plan.
“So the plan has been delayed,” Miller said. “There are only possibly four ways to get this new building.”
In addition to student building fees, donations could be collected, a state loan could be requested or the students could tax themselves, Miller said.
The EMU administration has avoided asking the state for money because the EMU would have to become “extremely, heavily retail-oriented” in order to pay the debt, Miller said.
“That’s just not philosophically what the students want out of their union,” he added. In addition, the revenue raised from retail wouldn’t be enough to pay the debt.
Under the new plan, the Women’s Center and Craft Center would have received even more space.
“We’re still feeling cramped,” said Garner Britt, assistant coordinator of the Craft Center. “We’re thrilled (about the expansion), but it’s a Band-Aid.”
“As long as oppression is a problem for women, we’ll always need to be building and expanding,” O’Brien said.
These two offices are the lucky ones. There are many other resident groups and services in the student union that could use space, but won’t get it for some time.
“The EMU is not configured in a way that studnts like to use contemporary unions,” Miller said. The building is too small and confusing, he added.
“In some places (internal systems) were 55 years old,” Miller said.
Junior Brandon Rhodes, vice-chairman of the EMU Board of Directors and chairman of the Long Range Planning Committee, said the EMU Master Plan is something that the board “invested a whole lot of time and money in.”
“I do believe that students need a better building,” Rhodes said. He added that the east portion of the building, an addition that was built onto the original building in the 1970s, has ceiling leaks and problematic ventilation.
The process of developing the Master Plan involved talks with professional architects and studies of which enhancements were appropriate in an 18-month process, Miller said.
“(The Master Plan) is what we found met our ideal when we tried to guess how will students want to use their union in the next 20 to 25 years,” Miller said. “It’s a slightly bigger union; however, it’s a much more efficient use of space.”
In the meantime, the building is being improved section by section. Upstairs, the EMU HVAC, or heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system is about to get more than $1 million
in maintenance.
“Available money allows us to retrofit this building in the
interim,” Miller said.
Miller said EMU administration had delayed maintenance on
the building’s east portion because it was reluctant to spend money on components that it expected to completely replace. When it became clear that the Master Plan would be put on hold, student union leadership had no choice but to address
the deficiencies.
“The students need a building that works,” Rhodes said. “This is going to be an interesting struggle for students to get the funding, and we don’t know if we will. The future is not certain.”

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