Coming soon to St. Thomas University: accessible hallways and student services and sweet silence broken by birdsong – rather than construction.
In the next few weeks, students will be seeing a whole new George Martin Hall. Much of the construction that was started last year will be finishing up in the next few weeks.
Some areas, like the first floor foyer and hallways in front of the cafeteria, will be finished as early as next week, sporting new coats of paint and flooring.
Student services such as the registrar’s office and accessibility services will be moving into new offices beside the existing financial services office.
“The idea is to bring all of the student services into one place,” said Bill MacLean, STU’s director of facilities management.
The second floor, which is home to the chapel, campus ministry, and several classrooms, will soon be free of dust. Many of the windows in the chapel were replaced last spring and over the summer.
The next step is to replace the doors from the chapel to meet the fire code. The GMH roof, accessible via the chapel, will be converted into green space.
A new trellis has been added on to the Vanier side of the roof. It is going to have vines growing over it “to give it a more collegiate look.”
According to MacLean, the dumpsters will soon be moving closer to the building behind the new fence under the trellis, which will improve the scenery in the Vanier parking lot.
“The construction zone was actually made smaller a couple of weeks ago so that students would be able to use the staircase from upper to lower campus,” said MacLean.
The third floor of GMH will be finished in another two weeks, and workers will be testing rooms for students, using accommodations provided by accessibility services.
Academic advising will also move to the third floor, along with the office for dean of students Larry Batt.
Classrooms such as GMH 304 will be refreshed with new paint and floors.
The GMH upgrades, as well as improvements in Vanier Hall, Harrington Hall and Edmund Casey Hall, are paid for with parts of the $5-million STU received from the federal government as part of Canada’s Economic Action Plan.
In January, MacLean told the Aquinian that the renovations would pay for themselves over eight years because of savings on energy costs.
