On June 4, the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors announced that they have decided to spend $3.5 million to develop plans to demolish and replace Slusher Hall/Tower, which currently houses 630 students. Overseeing these plans will be the Associate Director of Facilities, David Chinn. Chinn has worked at Virginia Tech for 11 years, the most recent 2.5 years in his current position.
Along with plans to reconstruct Slusher, the Department of Facilities also has two new residential housing center plans in the works. These new buildings will focus on Virginia Tech’s innovative nature, exhibiting new common room layouts the campus has not seen before. Virginia Tech has previously faced controversy over lack of available dorm space for on-campus students due to delays in construction, as well as due to being unprepared for a record number of incoming freshman. David Chinn comments on how Virginia Tech is improving the campus and learning from past mistakes.
Q: Why are these renovation and reconstruction plans so important to Virginia Tech?
A: I think the mission is to really grow the University. It’s something the president mentioned when he first started, President Sands, trying to grow enrollment. I think he sees an opportunity to deepen that, and opportunities for the students to collaborate better. So a lot of the new residence halls that we’re planning are in this Living Learning Community model that have both freshman, sophomores, juniors, seniors, as well as a lot of different disciplines, or majors; to really kind of have those interactions where maybe you have an engineering major next to an art major and a business major that really can collaborate together and really further their own education just through those collisions, as we like to call them.
Q: Could you give some information as to what construction plans are going on now and what is planned for any other residential buildings?
A: We just completed a large renovation to O’Shag, that was about a $20 million project, roughly. We renovated the entire interior, added a nice new exterior glass staircase, added air conditioning, which of course is a big plus, new furniture, new flooring, new walls, ceilings, new bathrooms, all that type of stuff. [O’Shag] did not necessarily add more beds, per say, it did add a Living Learning Community, which is a faculty member that lives in the building. We are also in the design process for what we are calling the acronym CID, Creative and Innovative District. That is going to go over where the University Club [100 Otey Club, Blacksburg, VA] used to be. It’s going to have about 600 new beds. It will also be about 200,000 square feet. It will have a lot of arts studios in there, makerspaces, performance areas.
Q: In 2015, Virginia Tech had to offer a number of $2,000 incentives to upperclassmen for them to move off campus in order to make room for a then-record number of incoming freshmen. What are you doing to prepare for President Sands’ prediction of having over 30,000 undergraduates by 2023?
A: There were a couple of issues a few years ago that exacerbated that issue. So, we were building two new residence halls, in the upper quad. Those were running late in construction and so the contractor wasn’t able to open them on time and so when that happened, we were forced to try and find additional housing outside of our campus. So that’s why some of the students were offered incentives to go to Foxridge or what not. As far as what were trying to do to prepare for the higher enrollment, it really has a big ripple effect. The first thing we got to do is build the infrastructure for them to be here, so that’s utilities, water, power, sewer lines to the new buildings. Then once we have the buildings in place, we’ll staff accordingly, and that’s beyond our student affairs role. We’ll need additional RAs, have residence life coordinators, if we stay with the LLC model, additional faculty and then of course our maintenance and housekeeping staffs. The third project that is planned in the master plan is the Global Business and Analytics Complex. So that one’s going to happen after Slusher, or that’s the plan, that’s an about $225 million project. That will add about another 600 to 700 beds on top of that. That will be largely around the School of Business, Pamplin. So that will have a lot of Pamplin related items in that facility. It’s planned to go over somewhere near the Virginia Tech Inn, so over by the parking lot that’s existing now or on the golf course side. That has not been finalized but that’s going to add a lot of beds also. So combined with CID, Slusher and GBAC, it will really help grow the on campus enrollment.
Q: Over the summer, the Board of Visitors announced that they plan to start construction on Slusher Tower and Slusher Hall. Thinking back to 2017, over 600 students were in non-traditional housing because O’Shag Hall was closed for renovation. How is Virginia Tech planning on avoiding that happening again?
A: So the CID project will add about 600 new beds. We’re hoping that will be ready by the fall of 2021, just about 3 years from now. That is about as fast as we can design and build something. We hope that the year after that, part of Slusher will be done too. So in that case the plan is to add about 630 beds, and a modified addition to Campbell Hall. So the plan right now is to add a little bit onto Campbell and then to remove both Slusher Tower and Slusher Wing and build back new spaces there.
Q: How many additional beds, not counting the amount already housed in existing buildings, will the Slusher project add?
A: I think it will end up adding roughly about 100 beds. That one’s a little bit earlier in the design phase than the CID project. CID is at the point at which they are getting ready to hire a Design Build Contractor. Thats a designer, an architect and a contractor and they work together. So we’re hoping to be in construction for CID as early as this spring, [Spring 2019] if not the beginning of the summer after graduation. Slusher is about a year behind that schedule, so we’re hoping that the Slusher project will be in construction about the Summer of 2020.
Q: Are interactive common areas such as kitchens, lounges, study rooms, something that Virginia Tech is looking at with importance and cruciality?
A: Without a doubt. The CID space has a lot of common areas. In fact, the entire first floor and a majority of the second floor have a lot of common spaces, kitchens, senior common libraries, art studios, stuff like that. It’s very important. We want students to be seen and to have interactions and be out in the common areas and not be hiding in their rooms, so to speak. We want it to be a nice place where they can go and see other people and connect. One of the things we’re looking into doing for example, in Payne Hall, in the next year, we’re hoping, by next year I mean the summer, to put a large kitchen in the current classroom in Payne. It’s a large meeting room on the first floor. What we would like to do is put a large kitchen in that’s somewhat of a ‘show and tell’ type kitchen. Something that has a large island where you could do demonstrational cooking. And you could have the floor come down, or residents, and go through and cook a large meal together. You could show people how to cook maybe a healthier meal and all enjoy it together. So it’s definitely something we’re trying to do in all of our buildings, both existing and the new ones. Trying to provide opportunities for those interactions.
Q: Are these spaces similar to the Pritchard Hall kitchen lounges?
A: That’s right! So the kitchens we have in Pritchard and AG are much more standard. We just did the same thing in the Lee second floor lounge. That one was really, to put it nicely, old and outdated, so we just put a nice large kitchen in there, lots of nice comfortable seating. We’re going to try to get a game table of some sort, pool table or ping pong table. We put air conditioning in it this summer. So Lee Hall, which itself does not have air conditioning, putting it in that large space hopefully will be an attraction as well.
Patience Baldacci 