Barbara Hodel Center Progressing Nicely
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The Barbara Hodel Center is building. |
Published in The Herald 9/26/08
If the Barbara Hodel Student Center appears large from the outside, a tour of its unfinished interior will confirm its spaciousness. The center has three levels—two floors and a basement—and will contain athletic facilities, offices and classrooms, along with space for a host of other activities.
The center is scheduled for completion—pending approval of final inspections and certificates of occupancy—at the end of May, 2009.
The main-level entrance of the center opens into a two-story grand entry with a bookstore on one side and a student lounge on the other.
The west side of this floor includes a large fitness room for weights and exercise equipment, and likely “a suspended punching bag for kickboxing classes and things like that,” Earl Hall, PHC’s VP of Campus Administration, said during a student tour of the center.
One of the main attractions of the floor, the gymnasium, will have bleachers, a full basketball court, and four fencing stripes. The main level will also be home to the new cafeteria which will seat 220 students; an upper level will seat around 180 more.
Entrances to a game room and a student kitchen lead from the upper-level dining hall. Students can check out a key to use the kitchen, Hall said. “Just leave the space clean when you’re done, and don’t burn it down,” he said.
The upper floor will also provide around twenty new offices, a prayer room, and a visitor center that Hall described as “a high-level, formal, VIP-style reception and meeting space.” The upper level is open to the gym, with a raised running track encircling it.
The center will have two elevators—a utility/food services elevator on the east side of the building, and a public elevator on the west side. Down in the west side of the basement are both men’s and women’s locker rooms and two racquetball courts whose games can be viewed through windows on the main floor. There are plans for smaller, staff men’s and women’s locker rooms, according to Hall, and a laundry room for towel service.
Music practice rooms, a new journalism lab and video studio, and a large mail room also feature in the student center's basement.
Hall said that certain rooms, such as the student kitchen and the visitor center, were marked for potential “deferred completion.” In order to stay under budget, these rooms would be left unfinished, without flooring or drywall, until further money could be raised. While the projected cost of the center has been met, thanks to an anonymous donor, the actual costs are still being calculated.
After the completion of the student center, all of PHC’s offices will be in the center and on the first floor of Founder’s Hall, Hall said. Office space upstairs in Founder’s Hall will be used by the Home School Legal Defense Association. “They’re in need of extra space as well,” Hall said.
The center will also serve as the campus’s emergency shelter. A 3,000 gallon diesel tank, “about the size of a freight car,” will provide fuel for the building’s backup generator, Hall said. In case of emergency, “we’ll keep you fed, warm, dry…and we’ll keep you on the Internet,” Hall said, smiling.
