By snoadmin
Only a year after receiving minor renovations, Parkside College’s dining hall will undergo a $6 million renovation this summer in order to create a more open environment for residents.
The dining hall received new floors and paint last summer, but according to Carol Roberts-Corb, director of housing and residential life at Cal State Long Beach, the upcoming renovation will be a complete makeover. The renovation will include gutting the interior and changing the dining halls completely, Roberts-Corb said.
The renovation will expand the dining hall, connecting it to the Parkside Commons Office, and create an outside patio where students will be able to eat their meals, according to Roberts-Corb. Although the patio will be outside, it will include a covering.
The patio area will be open for students to use even during the dining hall’s closing hours. It will have sliding doors on each side, which will be locked during working hours.
“We want it [the patio] to be the center of life in Parkside,” Roberts-Corb said.
The new dining hall will also include Wi-Fi, outlets and a modern design with the Parkside colors, burgundy and gold. The Parkside College emblem will also be displayed on one of the walls.
The bathrooms in the Parkside Commons building will also undergo a renovation to make them more accessible for disabled residents and visitors, according to Roberts-Corb. She said that after the renovation, the dining hall will have a pizza oven and different food stations, such as pasta, salad, vegetarian and vegan items and a grill station.
Students will also be able to watch their food being made, Roberts-Corb said.
“You can watch them as they make your pizza, your sandwich, your salad and other foods,” she said. “This is so students see their food is made fresh.”
The renovation will allow for more variety in seating arrangements in the dining hall, including individual seating, two- and four-person seating, round tables, long tables and built-in booths, according to Roberts-Corb. As of now, the dining hall only offers round tables for students to use.
A private dining room that can be reserved for meetings will also be installed, but Robert-Corbs said that if the room is not reserved, anyone will be able to use it.
The $6 million needed to fund the project will be drawn from the housing renovations reserve, according to Roberts-Corb.
“We’ve been saving little by little to have enough money to do this,” she said.
Residents said the Parkside dining hall is fine as it is now but that the renovations sound like a big improvement.
“[The dining hall’s] alright. Beggars can’t be choosers,” sophomore kinesiology major David Hernandez said. “The booths sound really sick, instead of the round tables they have now.”
Some students who don’t plan to live in the dorms next year also looked forward to the renovation.
“Even though I’m not going to live on campus next year, I’ll definitely come back to see the renovations,” sophomore engineering major Paul Oo said.
Roberts-Corb said a complete sketch of the renovations with color finishes will be completed at the end of the month and will be placed in the dining hall and the Parkside Office for residents to see.
The construction schedule is still being finalized, but the renovation is expected to be completed before the fall semester begins. Roberts-Corb said plans for renovating Hillside College’s dining hall are also being drafted with the hope of starting the project in the summer of 2014.
