Brown and White Vol. 128 no. 19

              The Brown and White
Vol. 128 No. 19
Friday, April 17, 2015
‘All the Lehigh News First’
A broken elevator in the University Center has impacted dining operations in Lower Cort and has required the dining halls to use disposable, rather than reusable tableware.
The Bethlehem Fire Department arrived at the UC two weeks ago, after a DC motor in the elevator overheated, causing smoke to set off the alarms. Since then, the ele­vator has remained unusable, and Dining Services employees have been forced to utilize the only other elevator in the building.
Dining Services operates on all floors of the UC. These facili­ties include student dining, retail operations and faculty dining. David Joseph, the executive direc­tor of student auxiliary services, said with the elevator used spe­Renovations
to Williams Hall, which are scheduled to be fin­ished by the end of the Spring 2015 semester, have been stalled due to weather conditions and prior rushed construction.
Julia Parker, the university architect and the director of cam­pus planning, said there have been setbacks to the construction plans, such as adverse weather conditions and amending struc­tural issues.
“The construction of the fourth floor was done extremely quickly and we’ve uncovered—as we’ve gone through the project—a lot of deficiencies in the construction of the fourth floor and we are recti­fying that as we go through,” she said. “We had difficulty doing the exterior work because of the cold winter conditions.”
In 1958, there was a fire in Williams Hall. The fire did dam­age to the upper part of the build­ing.
The university then recon­structed the upper floors, added a fourth floor and flattened the roof to how it looked until recently.
Parker said the construction after the fire was hastily finished and has accounted for many of the setbacks in the current ren­ovations.
The current renovations will be restoring the roof of Williams Hall to what it was before the fire.
“We have mimicked the old roof style, except now it’s up one more story,” she said. “(The roof) will be meant in part to cover the mechanical equipment that’s below it and in part to mimic the original roof.”
The interior is expected to be done at the end of May or early June of this year.
Departments will start to be moved into the building at the beginning of June, once classes are over.
Parker said there will still be some work to be done, mostly on the exterior and the greenhouse, after the departments move into the building.
“Our colleagues in facilities ser­vices have kept us apprised and involved in the Williams Hall renovation project,” said John
cifically for dining services being broken, it has changed the dining operations.
Joseph said the inability to transport clean dishes to the dif­ferent floors of the building has resulted in an increased workload for the Sodexo staff.
“It increases manpower and adds to the physical toll on the staff,” he said. “They realize things like this happen and they take it all in stride, making adjustments to continue to provide services.”
Bruce Christine, the general manager of Dining Services, said there is not enough manpower to continue using regular tableware. Using Styrofoam plates was their last resort.
In one day, the total number of Styrofoam plates being used is approximately 3,000 to 3,500. This poses a large problem because dis­posables cost more than normal tableware.
“By the time we go through the day, it’s phenomenally expen­sive,” Christine said.
Christine also said that the hours of operations, meals and menus for all the dining options in the UC have remained the same.
The elevator has also impacted the way food deliveries function. Much of the food is now brought in through the basement of the UC, through the hallway or the second floor.
On Friday, 16 palettes of food were delivered. Typically, work­ers would use the palette jack and transport the palettes of food into the elevator to the appropri­ate floor. Without the functioning elevator, the food needed to be removed from the palette piece by piece, transported in a truck and
Williams Hall construction stalled
Delays force renovations to continue into summer
By MATTHEW COSSEL
B&W Staff
See WILLIAMS Page 3
Elevator malfunction causes Lower Cort problems
See ELEVATOR Page 3
Photo courtesy of Julia Parker
RIGHT: Construction surrounding Williams Hall on Wednesday. The renovations of the building are set to be completed in June.
LEFT: Williams Hall before the 1958 fire that destroyed part of the roof of the building. It was home to the biological sciences and earth and environmental sciences up until the construction of STEPS in 2010.
By EMILY LAN
B&W Staff
Lillie Zakin/B&W Staff
One of the maintenance men pushes a cart off of the U.C. elevator on Monday. The elevator was not available for use last week after a DC motor in the elevator overheated.
Andrew Garrison/B&W Staff