SOUTH HADLEY — Mount Holyoke College’s Blanchard Campus Center will get a $50 million upgrade to consolidate dining services on campus and provide more space for the college community to gather.
Shannon Gurek, vice president for finance and administration at Mount Holyoke, said the improvements will include a coffee house, recreation space and several dining areas. A renovation of the current building, along with construction of a 34,000-square-foot addition, will begin in May after commencement and the annual reunion and is expected to last 18 months.
“We’ve been thinking about and talking about our dining program for many years,” Gurek said. “We started studying what it would take to get a community center on campus.”
Blanchard, last renovated and expanded in 2003, is currently where 40 percent of student dining takes place, Gurek said. By moving all of the dining services to Blanchard, as well as expanding student and community spaces, the space will become more of a hub for student activity.
Included in the plan will be a concert venue, a headquarters for student clubs and a unity space, which will be dedicated to discussions about cultural identity, according to Gurek. The improvements will also make the building fully accessible.
The impetus for building the addition came from a 2013 facilities study that assessed the physical spaces on campus and how they were being used. The top recommendation of the study was to build a community center with dining. The study observed that Blanchard has become a de facto center for dining, but that it is often crowded because it was not designed for that purpose.
The college’s board of trustees reviewed a September plan for the upgrade to the building and approved it Feb. 27.
The new dining space will include 1,000 seats, along with a salad bar, and will serve pizza, made-to-order sandwiches and all-day breakfast as well as options for a variety of dietary needs.
The three-story renovation will also include offices for the college’s 120 student organizations, a student art gallery and a game room.
Of the $50 million, $5 million will be paid by an anonymous alumna donor, who also said she would match $10 million in additional donations that exceed $250,000.
The remaining $25 million will be raised through loans, though Gurek said that would not affect tuition due to some other debt being refinanced and some being fully paid off.
“We will have lower debt service than we are currently paying,” she said.
In a statement, the anonymous donor said she was inspired by the college’s commitment to enhance the campus community and at the same time remain competitive with other colleges by offering a nice campus center.
“Community is something that has always been an important part of Mount Holyoke,” she said in the statement. “We are creating a new tradition with beautiful state-of-the-art dining commons and center that will provide even more opportunities for students, faculty and staff to connect as part of a larger community. This could happen through conversations, meetings or just hanging out. The center will also allow students to build relationships through shared activities and meals, which we know promotes healthier lives.”
Gurek said the building will be constructed with sustainability in mind, but that the college will not seek LEED certification, which sets standards for how environmentally friendly a building is. Instead, she said the building will be built to LEED-equivalent standards with an idea of maximizing energy efficiency and minimizing other environmental impacts of construction, renovation and ongoing use of the building.
Gurek said the renovation and addition to Blanchard will help Mount Holyoke continue to compete for students.
“We are excited to offer the kind of experience students expect to find at colleges and universities today while still continuing the tradition of community dining,” Gurek said. “The community center will allow us to meet those needs and also serve as a centerpiece of the campus.”
Dave Eisenstadter can be reached at deisen@gazettenet.com.