By Kanoa Ikeda-Flynn
Dominicans Main Campus Dining Hall has undergone major renovations to its facility during the Summer.
With the flooring re-gutted, walls repainted, and water sealant coated along on the facilities baseboards, the Dining Hall has come a long way with its improvements as an eating establishment for Dominicans residents, staff, and visitors.
The dining staff continued to operate out of Parmer Hall’s nutrition kitchens to carry out Dominican’s sponsored events during the Summer. During this time, the renovations were quickly carried out in preparation for the upcoming year.
Ryan Babich, the Assistant Director of Dining Services described the need for many improvements.
“It was time for it to be updated. There were a lot of things we needed to fix to have it running to our expectations. There is only so much maintenance that can be done before we need to just renovate.”
Following a health report in January of 2018, the facility was in dire need of improvements and better maintenance due to defective dishwashers and overall facility disrepair. Following this, an updated report in the month of March gave Dominican a clean bill of health yet the building and some machines were reaching the end of their lifetimes.
It was because of this brush with health code violations that we saw a revamp of the facility to provide a cleaner and more effective design for the building and the equipment alike.
The focus remained predominately on the kitchen section, whereas the front dining area and Cyber Cafe were left mainly untouched.
The overall goal is to modernize yet keep the aesthetic drawn out by the underlying architecture of DU. According to the Dominican Buildings and Grounds department, there is current planning underway to create an updated front-end of the dining hall. With the department’s mission statement stating to “operate and maintain safe and efficient facilities”, ensuring safe, clean, and professional food facilities do take priority in the spending budget.
Any form of renovation or major construction operation derive from the Project Manager and Associate Director of Operations, Dawn Morse. From the West Campus Field, to the newest furniture additions around the campus, Morse is responsible for making the renovations to the Dining Hall a priority.
“We were able to work with a grant that allowed for both this renovation, and future ones soon to come.”
The Dining Hall is part of the main campus facility; one which is as old as the university’s motto itself “Caritas et Veritas”. According to Morse, the main priority of these renovations is to both maintain the safety and beauty of the Dominican campus considering its age.
“Maintenance comes in to work all the time. The building is old so that why it’s important that we stay on top of repairs and continue to make improvements.”
While future projects were not able to be mentioned, it was confirmed that there will be renovation to the front of the Dining Hall, will see future improvements. Other smaller aspects about the modernization of Dominican included the implementation of new furniture throughout the campus as a whole.
vikedkano@my.dom.edu
Image courtesy: Kanoa Ikeda-Flynn
