Since Johnson State College went public with the decision to take out a $9.2 million loan for campus renovations, there has been a lot of unrest amongst the student body concerning the 500 dollar increase that’ll be tacked to the annual tuition fee. Stearns, the focus of roughly seven million dollars alone, will be renovated into a 24-hour student center, according to the master plan. But what exactly does that mean?

“There’re so many new features in here that’ll be really valuable to students and we really got them from students,” says Dean of Administration and Chief Technology Officer, Sharron Scott, alluding to a campus survey last year.

The entire building is going to be gutted and reconfigured to create an environment that is comfortable, space efficient, user friendly, and aesthetically pleasing. Even the exterior of the building will undergo dramatic change. For example, the bridge, and the pathway that runs beneath it, will be gone.

Upon walking through the main entrance, two curved stone walls will lead students into the ‘the Fireplace Lounge.’ In this area, there will be soft seating, a fireplace, a curved stone wall with a big mantle, and a hearth that students can sit on. The big concrete staircase that currently sits in the middle of the room will be removed and the majority of flooring will have charcoal carpeting with a pattern of circles in various shades of green and cream.

To the right of ‘the Fireplace Lounge’ will be the new café.

“Think a little bit like Starbucks,” says Scott. “Something kind of eclectic that will serve smoothies and coffee drinks and bakery items. You can work on your laptop, hang out with friends, and watch what’s going on out on the quad. Very bright and light and just really an inviting space.”

Cash, points and credit cards will all be acceptable forms of payment and more so, it will be open until at least eleven o’clock at night, according to Scott.

To the left of ‘the Fireplace Lounge’ will be the new radio station.

Also, the Women’s Center will move to the back right classroom, allowing its current home to become a conference room that will be dedicated to student use. The SGA office will move to where the Public Safety office is now, and the 1867 room will become a TV lounge, complete with comfortable furniture and the big TV that currently resides in the SA office in Dewey.

Computer kiosks will be situated throughout the building and an elevator that will be available for everybody to use will run from the top level of Stearns to the bottom, creating a building that is not only more convenient, but also much more handicap accessible than it is right now.
A master staircase will wind down to the third level, which will see major changes. “It’s really going to be able to change the way that they eat on campus,” Scott says.

At the bottom of the stairs, a corridor will lead to the checker’s station, which will be a small office with a sliding window instead of a cart on wheels. After scanning their cards, diners will progress directly into the servery instead of crossing through the dining room first.
“We get rid of the whole ‘salmon swimming upstream’ thing that we have today, where you have people entering and exiting through the same door and we have the dishes falling on the floor,” says Scott.

In addition to the areas serving hot dishes such as meatloaf and macaroni and cheese, the salad bar, and the deli (which will have integrated soup pots), the servery will have a new grill station.

“The addition of a new grill station will enable students to request ‘make-to-order’ items everyday,” Scott says. “So if you want to eat a cheeseburger every single day, you can have a cheeseburger every single day. If you want a grilled chicken instead of a cheeseburger or you want to have grilled chicken to put on top of your salad, that can be made for you. You just have to be willing to wait a couple of minutes while that’s being cooked. That alone, I think, is a remarkable change for us.”

Perhaps equally as remarkable will be the addition of a new stone pizza oven—a feature that will enable students to eat pizza whenever they want to.

“It will be restaurant quality and the pizza will be made right there on the floor from pizza dough—you’ll be able to see it start from the dough rising—to the pizza going into the oven, and that’s going to be terrific,” Scott says. “If you’re willing to wait a few minutes, there’ll be days when there’ll be calzones made and strombolies and things that you can have made a little bit more custom for you right there. And again, for a lot of students, the ability to be able to have pizza everyday or a calzone everyday is going to be fantastic for them. It’s going to be great.”

Stearns will also go tray-less in the fall semester, which will, among other things, aid in energy conservation, according to Scott.

Equipped with new tables and chairs, the aesthetic changes to the dining hall will make it a more attractive space in which to eat and socialize. The bright paint will be sandblasted from the cement walls, bringing out the neutral colors of the cement and brickwork.

The virtually indestructible high school institutional tiles will be ripped up and replaced with vinyl tile planks. When finished, the dining room will appear to have a convincing hardwood floor.

The carpeted alcoves off to the sides of the dining room will become glass-walled private dining areas that can be signed out for both student and faculty use. These spaces can be used for conferences, club meetings, late classes, or even birthday parties.

The dining hall itself will be accessible almost 24 hours a day following the renovations. “The dining room itself will be available for anyone to use once it is cleaned after dinner,” said Scott. “So once the library closes at 11 o’clock, if you have a study group of 10 or 11 or 20 people even, you can come over to the dining room, push a bunch of tables together and have your study group right there.”

A large area will be opening up on the second level of Stearns, replacing the current mailroom and bookstore and enabling the addition of a fully-rigged performance space.

“It’s basically the same size as the current Base Lodge, but instead of being oriented kind of the long way, it’s oriented along the window side of the building,” Scott says. “We’re putting a stage in that’s substantially larger than the one we have today. It’ll have a small integrated snack bar and concessions kind of area where Late Night can be run. It’ll have built in seating along a few of the walls and built in counter surfaces and an integrated dance floor.”

“It’s going to be very club-like, whereas the Base Lodge has sort of a parents’ rec. room kind of feel. Think more nightclub—dark ceiling, lots of tones of red colors—definitely more club vibe than rec. room vibe,” said Scott.

The first level of Stearns will be home to more entertainment space, specifically for gaming and movies. One concept that has received a lot of buzz from students is the addition of a new movie viewing space.

“It will have three levels of stadium style seating, sloping ceiling, projection screen TV, surround sound. It’ll have great sound, great viewing capability and comfortable chairs,” said Scott, noting that the space will seat about 45 people.

Also on this floor will be space designated for gaming, where students will go to play pool, foosball, and maybe even arcade games, if the budget allows.

The first level will also house the mailroom and will be equipped with 24-hour accessible vending machines.

The setup of the renovated building will allow the space available to be used in the most efficient way possible.

“We’re decoupling gaming space from event space so that, if you think about it, on a Friday or Saturday night, you could have a movie going on, a pool tournament, and a Wii festival.” Scott says. “You could have a music performance going on in the event space. You could have meetings going on in the dining room in the quiet spaces, or even a major event like a reception going on there. You could have people hanging out in ‘the Fireplace Lounge’ and you could have something going on in the radio station and people hanging out in the café. There can be all that going on within the same space without disrupting each other, which today you really can’t do.”

Scott said that where possible construction will feature green engineering, from the installment of environmentally friendly lighting to the selection of low VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) carpeting to the installment of Marmoleum flooring, which resembles marble while being made primarily from wood pulp and linseed oil, on the first level.

According to Scott, the dining hall will be completely redone by the beginning of next semester while everything else is expected to be finished by Halloween of this year.

According to Scott, by the end of February, Stearns will be ready to begin staged interior demolition and reconstruction. The bookstore will be at its new home in Dewey. The mailroom will be temporarily relocated to one of the racquetball courts in SHAPE. Public Safety will be temporarily in Dewey and the Women’s Center will be temporarily going virtual. The 1867 room and the Base Lodge will, for now, be sharing Dewey Soft Seating, and Coffee Houses will take place in the dining room.

The dining hall will remain fully functional when construction begins in March—the first major project being the installation of an elevator shaft. There’s a possibility that the sound of jackhammers ripping through cast concrete might be abrasive, but there is a definite upside.

“The great news is that you will start paying the fee in the fall, and you will see value in the fall. You’ll see value in that first semester,” Scott says.