As Mark Higbee noted recently, there’s a story in today’s AANews about Pray-Harrold renovations, “Legislature grants EMU request for funding of Pray-Harrold renovation.” Now, not to take anything away from Susan Martin and this new era of transparency, but this request has been in the pipeline for about 10 years. Martin et al pushed it across the finish line, but there were a lot of others– including Kirkpatrick and Fallon, frankly– who did some of the heavy lifting.
Anyways, it’s good news, even if a real start to ground-breaking is years off. Maybe years and years off.
What is the best guess as to when it will happen? No one knows. But just to keep it interesting, I would like to propose a friendly contest.
Without further ado, I’d like to announce the “Pray-Harrold renovation finally begins” pool.
The rules are simple:
- Predict the date on which renovation construction begins.*
- Enter the contest by posting your prediction as a comment on this post, or (for the more shy among you) by send me an email to emutalk at gmail dot com
- One entry per person, of course. Anyone is eligible to enter, including administrators and BoR members who know more about what’s going on here than the rest of us– well, in theory of course.
- Entries must be posted here or emailed to me by October 31, 2008.
- The winner will receive a fabulous gift and/or prize worth up to $100.**
* What is the definition of “renovation construction begins?” For the purposes of this contest, the beginning of renovation will be defined as actual and visible construction crews doing work in the building in the name of renovation. “Renovation construction” does not include raising money, making plans, and/or ceremonial turns of gold shovels, and it doesn’t include other kinds of on-going/routine maintenance and construction in the building. For example, another elevator repair doesn’t count. This definition might seem a little vague, but I think it is fair to say that “we will know it when we see it.”
** A little more about the fabulous gift and/or prize up to $100. The funding for this will come out of some combination of my own pocket and the revenue generated by the advertising on EMUTalk.org. There is a longer story here, but basically, I think I will make enough money from ads this year to both cover my operating expenses and to cover a gift and/or prize of up to $100. I’ll figure out what exactly that prize will be a bit later (frankly, I think it will be years before I’ll be paying off on this), but I am imaging something like a gift certificate from an Ypsi-area business.
So, let the games begin!
Ed. Note: This was sent to my email and I thought I’d pas it along. Be rest-assured that commentators can remain anonymous easily by posting comments the old-fashioned way, too.
As a faculty member that resides above the 4th floor of Pray-Harrold, I can only feel frustration and regret at the current news regarding the Pray-Harrold
“upgrade”. The $31 million received from the state and any matching funds from the University will at most provide a band-aid fix to a building that
has far outlived it’s usefulness. Faculty offices and department spaces are scheduled for paint jobs and minor upgrades (like new electrical outlets). The majority
of dollars are to go to more visible spaces on the second and third floors. Whatever benefit is derived from these changes in the classrooms will quickly
dissipate . No matter how much Bondo you have, sooner or later you need to replace the car.
Faculty have been to passive with regard to this issue.
I don’t agree with my colleague’s comment. I think the shell of PH is sturdy, and the building can be made far more useful for educational purposes, by a solid re working of its’ “guts” — ventilation, heating, air conditioning, and basic classroom configurations. But the building should not be enlarged or at least not by much — and the bulk of the current program statement is devoted to plans to make this already too huge building even larger. That would be a fundamental mistake, but one no doubt appealing to the contractor that devised the program statement and hopes to get the contract for the $60 million project!
But i agree that too few faculty have participated in this process. One reason for that, of course, is that all faculty in PH had, for the last three years, to contend directly or indirectly with an Interim Dean who failed time and again to keep his word to make the program statement available. They never even circulated it to faculty or DHs. That sent a clear message that input was not welcome and would be ignored if it was provided.
But the fact remains that it is entirely unfeasible to just tear PH down and start over. Maybe $130 million.
First off, I think it’s fair to say that there is no viable plan about how refurbishing PH is going to work. I know there’s an ad-hoc college committee that is supposed to be talking about the plans because I’m the alternate for our department (I’m not sure if this committee has met yet). Yes, there have been various contingencies and such before, but I am quite sure that the powers that be are just going to blow the dust off of that report and start building.
(A slight update: I posted this before I saw Mark’s previous post about Wade saying all we need to do is blow off some dust! Ha! Well, I still think this dust-blowing scenario is probably wrong for a bunch of different reasons…).
Second, one of the problems with PH is, that despite its current size, it isn’t really big enough. I agree with Mark (and others) that it probably isn’t a good idea to add on to the building (though I haven’t really seen the plans for what that might mean); I personally think EMU needs more buildings.
And I guess this brings me to #3: I realize that we probably don’t have the money for this, but it seems to me that it would make more sense to building additional buildings, ones that are smaller and probably easier to maintain, and to move departments out of PH as these new buildings come on line.
And then, when PH is finally emptied out, we can implode the sucker.
Okay, okay, probably not realistic, but….
I’ll take a square on April 30, 2011. Two questions for Sitedad. If I’m the only one to enter this friendly guess by the deadline, do I automatically win? Secondly, do you mail prizes out of state or is it “must be present to win”? I don’t anticipate hanging around long enough to see the day work begins, by my estimate.
Two easy answers, MathGeek:
* If you are the only one who enters (and I find that hard to believe, but it has been kind of quiet lately), then I’ll expand the deadline for entering. I mean, given that I don’t think anyone is thinking that construction is going to begin this school year, I could extend the entry deadline quite a ways if necessary. Though I wouldn’t want to expand it too much.
* I’m anticipating a winnings in the form of some kind of gift certificate, so I I think we can make it work for folks who move on from EMU.
Put me down for September 4, 2011. I’ll be donating my sumptuous winnings to the computer science club.
Put me down for May 10th, 2010. Yes, I am hopeful.
September 5, 2009. Yes, I know, I am very optimistic. But with the scope of the work and the rising cost of construction materials, they are going to have to fast-track it. And I do hope they plan on retrofitting a fire sprinkler system this time. I can’t count how many fires there have been throughout the years there. I remember in 2001, the mechanical penthouse on the roof burned for hours and the entire building flooded. It took $10M to clean it up and install new ceilings on floors 2-7. All-in-all though, I can’t think of any other 40-year-old building that has survived so well with absolutely zero maintenance. That thing is rock solid!
Put me down for Nov. 24, 2009.
I’m betting my hopes, not my expectation here – contrary to my usual behavior with wagers. I depart from my policy here because in this pool set up by sitedad, there’s no cost to participate, so why not be optimistic?
The real question of course remains unchanged: Will the renovations of PH be designed and implemented in an educationally sound fashion? The late start in the planning process — which so far has not yet had any meaningful faculty input — is not an encouraging sign. Lots of PH inmates think the net results will be a less user-friendly building than what we have now. I don’t think the results will be that bad, but I understand the basis for the pessimism.
Well, Mark and I are both on the same enormous committee that is steering/advising this whole thing, and I know exactly what he’s talking about. I have profoundly mixed feelings about the whole thing.
There is a part of me that says it is better to do something than to do nothing at all; but there is also a part of me that thinks that if we can’t do it right, then we shouldn’t do it, period. (Of course, doing it “right” would really mean tearing the monstrosity down and build other buildings, but that’s a slightly different issue). But if anybody thinks we’re going to get the kind of remodeling that took place in Porter, where they literally hollowed out the shell and built all new inside, will be quite disappointed.
Had some architect-types inspecting the 5th floor premises last week, who mused that it would be nice to “open things up” and put faculty into a large cubicle space. Let’s nip that one in the bud, please.
That said, I’m neither optimistic nor pessimistic about the whole renovation thing. Que sera, sera.
2011.
Susan — your report of “architect-types inspecting the 5th floor premises last week, who mused that it would be nice to “open things up” and put faculty into a large cubicle space,” along with similar reports from other faculty who have had unscheduled interactions with these folks, is very alarming — and suggestive of how very far along the planning process for PrayHarrold renovations have proceeded with zero input from PH faculty. So far, the Advisory Committee that was elected last spring hasn’t been convened for a single meeting. Some administrators affirm that no planning has yet been done, yet others confidently assert that the planning process is far along. Either way is damning indeed – given how quickly the state timetable for spending state monies, we darn well better have some serious planning by now! But whatever planning has been done clearly hasn’t involved faculty — hence, the absurdity of paid consultants or staff members coming thru the building and spending time thinking about eliminating faculty offices and replacing them with cubicles. Surely everyone involved in the renovations of PH should start with at least the most basic concept of what higher education is about —which includes recognizing that faculty work is not reducible to the physical requirements of a corportate call center or any other ‘cubicle’ defined work space. These “architect-types” are actively spending at least some of their creative energy speculating on changes that would, beyond a doubt, decrease the quality of the educational environment in PH rather than improve it.
The usual poll of PH faculty indicates that less than half have confidence that the planning process has any integrity whatsoever. A sizable minority is convinced that any changes made will make the building worse than it at present.
The first Advisory Committee meeting is scheduled for the first week of December, more than 2 months after the state gave final approval of tens of millions of dollars for the building renovation.
Sadly nobody whose career at EMU has been largely spent working in PH has any position of authority in the PH renovation process. No wonder it’s on a back-burner as far as timely and quality planning goes. When there’s no accountability, the quality of work declines.
Well, my sense is that the input on what will actually be happening with the remodeling will come from PH faculty/staff-types after these marathon December meetings. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Though I think our options about what we will be able to propose for remodeling will be extremely limited.
Susan, I think you have nothing to worry about in terms of an “open office” floor plan coming our way anytime soon. And that is again where the real lack of money comes into play: besides the fact that faculty would fight that kind of arrangement (as well they should), I don’t think the money is in the budget for that kind of reconstruction. In fact, what I have heard is that most of what is going to get done is infrastructure things that day to day users of Pray-Harrold will not notice much.
But I have it on relatively good authority that they are seriously considering rehabbing offices like mine so that the one and only power outlet in the room is no longer sticking out of the middle of the floor. So I got that going for me.
Anyway, my participation in the process here is very modest– I am an alternate to the committee where my department is already well-represented– and my expectations are very low. To borrow a metaphor from the recent presidential campaign, we’re just putting lipstick on a pig here. We’re certainly not going to get the kind of dramatic remodeling that took place in Porter, and we’re not going to have the swanky newness of Marshall either.
Sitedad – can I change my guess? And are we talking about a ceremonial ground breaking, or when real work begins?
For a ceremonial ground breaking – I’ll stick with Nov. 24, 2009. For real construction work, I’ll say Jan 10, 2010. But i am unclear if changing of guesses is permitted.
I disclose that I have read the proposals submitted by firms seeking to do the design part of the PH renovation, and am modifying my guess based on that information. This is still a case of me betting my hopes, not expectations, since this is a no-risk bet.
Here’s what I said before on the definitions of renovations:
What is the definition of “renovation construction begins?” For the purposes of this contest, the beginning of renovation will be defined as actual and visible construction crews doing work in the building in the name of renovation. “Renovation construction” does not include raising money, making plans, and/or ceremonial turns of gold shovels, and it doesn’t include other kinds of on-going/routine maintenance and construction in the building. For example, another elevator repair doesn’t count. This definition might seem a little vague, but I think it is fair to say that “we will know it when we see it.”
For example, despite the ceremonial ground-breaking at Mark-Jefferson, as far as I can tell, no actual construction has begun.
Can you change a guess? Sure, why not? Let’s say though that the deadline for guesses is indeed December 31. Unless I change my mind about that too.
Also, I’m not sure actually being familiar with the plans/proposed plans will help with a guess or not. In fact, it might make one too optimistic….